ee cna ee ee 
ie co to a ae IM, ne 
ee en ene a 


a a ng a ee 
ee ey 


Seen cere mam ohana ae Ie a oe AN en 
er et a een ay eae waren 




















THE MIRACLE OF ME 





THE MIRACLE OF ME 


By 
BERNARD C. \CLAUSEN, D. D. 


Author of “ Preach It Again,” ete. 


PHILADELPHIA 


THE JUDSON PRESS 


BOSTON CHICAGO LOS ANGELES 
KANSAS CITY SEATTLE TORONTO 


Copyright, 1924, by 
THE JUDSON PRESS 





Published February, 1924 


PRINTED IN U. S. A. 


TO 


Hal ac: 





FOREWORD 


“God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of 
our Lord Jesus Christ.” 


There is a glorying which justifies itself. Even Paul, 
who despised false pride, boldly gloried in the message 
of the Cross. He who felt only shame for himself could 
give himself whole-heartedly to boasting of the salvation 
of Jesus. 

If this book, flaunting its rather flamboyant title, has 
one characteristic which binds its parts into unity, it is a 
certain unabashed glorying in the things of the gospel. 
Every sermon is a shout of boasting, as the preacher 
points to a truth from God. This is sheer reveling in 
the happiness of Christ’s light. “The Miracle of Me”’ 
is the miracle of Jesus’ indwelling. Why not be bold 
_ enough to cry aloud about it? 

Perhaps the years will make some change in these high 
spirits. Maturity may be expected to mellow the message 
and tone down these calliope notes. But for the present, 
we must take this preacher for what he frankly professes 


to be—a youthful enthusiast who is proud to be a slave 
of Christ. 


Thanks are due the publishers of the Christian En- 
deavor World for permission to reprint the sermons 
entitled “ The Strategy of Foch,” “ Denominational Dis- 
armament,” and “If I Had Time”; to the publishers 
of Association Men for permission to reprint “ What Are 
You Worth?”’; to the publishers of The Christian Cen- 
tury for permission to reprint “ The Religion of King 
Tut”; to the publishers of The Baptist for permission to 
reprint “A Living Wage for Christians ” and ‘“ Belgium 
and You”; and to the publishers of The Watchman- 
Examiner for permission to reprint ‘‘ Christian Crafts- 
manship.” 


CHAPTER 


is 
jak 


CONTENTS 


SE TIRSIVLIRA CED OR) Nitin sacl: ns hoa atts eis 1 

PeoeeoUICIDE OTHE: GHURCH cle eels s. 10 
. A Livinc WAGE FOR CHRISTIANS ......... 18 
PEGE ELIGION: ORC KING CUPS 2 aci cna aeeies 25 
Se VVIHAT. ARE YY, OU WORTH: Lie 15 toh coe atk oe Si: 
. AN ADVENTURE IN FRIENDLINESS ......... 47 
Ge HEA TRATEGYCOR HOCH scatae st see Le ae 
SRCGHRISTIAN CRAFTSMANSHIP): < 2. c tte ws 67 
. DENOMINATIONAL DISARMAMENT ......... hi 
MAISESSONS -FROMENLY. LORD: <i), sco een eh or 84 
SPECI ANDY OU nic oor aisheu astes Clee oe 90 
EERE CATS EMS yea et ee iis tree ot aes 99 


APPENDIX, THE CONGREGATION VoTES AGAIN 107 





THE MIRACLE OF ME 


It would be easy for me to prove to my own satisfaction 
that Iam a miracle. I am attempting a much more am- 
bitious and difficult task than that. I intend to prove 
beyond possibility of dispute that you are a miracle—each 
one of you. I shall do better than that. I shall refuse 
to be satisfied until I have made you believe that each 
person within sound of my voice is at least 784 different 
miracles all combined in one. 

Consider the Human Machine. Arnold Bennett, the 
great English novelist, has written an amazingly brief and 
yet useful book which he entitles “ The Human Machine.” 
Bennett insists that if men were to pay as much attention 
to the mere mechanics of their bodies as they pay to the 
engines which purr under the hoods of their motor-cars 
we should have a better race of men. If we exercised as 
good judgment in selecting foot-wear as in buying tires, 
if we studied diet as carefully as we investigate brands 
of gasoline and grades of lubricating oil, we might get 
better service out of our human machines. But they are 
so constantly and obviously with us, that we disdain to 
notice them until neglect forces them into a breakdown 
and we are compelled to stop. The superb miracles 
which are designed for our control go all unnoticed. We 
fail to get one thrill out of our mastery over these splendid 
engines which we inhabit. 

1 


2 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





The Miracle of the Hand 


Take the human hand, for instance. Most of us have 
two hands constantly ready for duty, and we pay no at- 
tention to them. I had to live through a war before I 
realized the miracle of my hands. I had to watch men 
whose hands had been shot away, fumble along using 
those crude, stubborn hooks, or slow, clumsy, artificial 
hands which surgeons devised, before I realized what an 
ingenious and skilful mechanism a hand is. 

A hand can talk. Not that awkward and slow lan- 
_ guage of the deaf and dumb alphabet which we found so 
useful in hushed classrooms during school days—though 
that is wonderful enough. But hands possess the lan- 
guage of emotions. I have had a handshake as clammy, 
as repellent, as utterly discouraging, as unpleasant as the 
feel of a cold oyster. I have had other grips which 
welcomed me like a bright hearth-fire. Indeed I have 
seen many an uninspiring sermon transformed into a 
masterpiece by the language which the hands spoke at the 
exits of the church where people were passing out. 

A hand can remember. I run a typewriter just skil- 
fully enough to respect the memory-faculty of my hands. 
I could not tell you, if you were to ask me now, how the 
letters are arranged on my keyboard. The rows of keys 
have made no impression on my mind. But as I type this 
sermon, my fingers, leaping to crystallize my thoughts in 
words, find without my bidding the letters which they re- 
member from a thousand such experiences. And before 
I know it, the word is typed on the page before me. 

A hand can soothe and heal. I need only close my 
eyes and recall, to feel the cool loveliness of: my mother’s 


THE MIRACLE OF ME 3 


hand on a hot boyish brow, brushing all the fever away. 
I turn delicate pages in a Bible to the text I need, I 
wield a heavy ax, or dig with a big shovel, I manipulate a 
pen through the intricate mysteries of writing, all with 
this precise and powerful instrument which I call my 
hand. 


More Wonders Unnoticed 


Time would fail me to discuss the miracles of the 
eye, the ear, and the voice—to say nothing of those 
hundreds of less obvious wonders. A few moments 
ago, I came from the bright sunlight into this shaded 
room. My eyes automatically adjusted the light open- 
ings so that, in a moment of time, I am as able to per- 
ceive your features here as I was in the sunlight of 
outdoors. You are hearing me because at the sides of 
your head are small, shell-like structures called ears, 
which accept the sound-waves leaping across this 
space. The waves are translated into nerve impulses 
which speed through the structures over the hammer- 
anvil-stirrup chain, to the brain centers of your mental 
life. And you smile or frown, you nod in agreement 
or shake in disagreement, as your ears forward to the 
inner YOU my thought. 

And this thought is reaching you because my body, 
eager to have you follow its idea, is engaged in an 
attempt to make the idea over into sounds. A column 
of air is being thrust by my diaphragm through my 
vocal cords and against the roof of my mouth just 
back of my teeth. Molded by teeth and tongue and 
jaws and lips, this sound is becoming words, and as 
such is clothing my thought with recognizable symbols 


4 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





of speech. There was a time when an accident de- 
prived me of the use of my tongue, and threatened to 
leave me speechless through the years. Out of those 
anxious days of silence, I took a vow that if the 
precious gift of speech were given back to me, I should 
try to speak no untrue, unfair, unkind word.so long as 
I lived. And that vow still echoes in my soul. 


Thank God for Your Body 


Will you grant my first contention now? Are you 
ready to admit that hundreds of miracles are combined 
to make that great miracle which is you? yee 

Notice then out of what humble materials these 
miracles are compounded. Porridge and Scotch scones 
and hot mutton pies combined to make the lyrics of Burns. 
A little rice and some green herbs gave us the wisdom:of 
Confucius. Sermons are built of hot buttered toast and 
a glass of milk. Beethoven’s music, Titian’s colors, 
Paul’s eloquence, all used commonplaces for their. sub- 
stance. That city-bred boy was not so blundering after 
all when he stood by the side of a pasture-lot and inno- 
cently asked, “ Father, what makes green grass in a red 
cow into white milk?” What does? 

And notice what combinations of differing bodily 
elements make up each single miracle! I say I have a 
hand. But is ita hand? Only when viewed very super- 
ficially. Made up as it is, of a score of substances each 
necessary for its proper functioning, it becomes a com- 
plex combination of skin and hair, and nails and muscles, 
and bones and veins and arteries and blood and marrow, 
and so on, into subdivisions of minute exactitude. These 


THE MIRACLE OF ME 5 





things all join in the perfection of my willing instrument, 
losing their own separate identity in a unit called my hand. 


Oneness Essential 


Its usefulness, however, is wholly dependent upon its 
remaining a part of me. I saw a hand once, cut away 
from its body; a dead, blood-marked white thing, it lay 
on the deck of my battle-ship, mute in the tragic futility 
of its separateness. I have never been able to erase 
from my mind the impression of its uselessness. 

Yet how magnificent is that transcendent miracle when 
each separate miracle becomes a part of one act of self- 
expression, synchronized, obedient, caught up in a glory 
beyond its poor self, in a symphony of orchestration. 
Such a miracle happens in a church service, when the 
eye sees the black notes printed in a musical score, and 
the foot reaches for the organ pedals, while the slender 
supple hands touch the waiting keyboard, and the ear 
alertly detects harmonies and effects, and the artist soul 
molds, enlivens, recreates the wonder of a mighty prelude. 
It is in such a moment as this that the unifying miracle 
glorifies all that enters into its unity. 


Christ’s Body 


Jesus had a body. Does the statement seem too abrupt? 
It is utterly true. Perhaps we have stressed and sensed 
his Godlikeness so vividly that we have been tempted to 
overlook the meaning of his humanity. Never fear. He 
is not less like God because he suffered pain. 

Hands like these broke the bread by the lake-shore; 
arms like these held little children and pressed them close; 


6 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





eyes like these saw the agonized face of pain in the push- 
ing crowds, detected a hiding Zaccheus in the foliage of 
the sycamore tree, watched the mob flocking like shep- 
herdless sheep to the place of his rest and recreation; ears 
like these heard the harsh, dry voices of pain and terror 
at the side of the road, “ Jesus, Master, have mercy on 
me!” and a voice like this—oh, infinitely more tender and 
wistful, I know—but a voice like this spoke the match- 
less words of the Sermon on the Mount. 

In a body like mine, combining in itself all the varieties . 
of physical experience, all the risks of exhaustion, all the 
temptations of appetite and ease, and all the glorious 
ecstasies of enjoyment, Jesus lived. He succeeded in 
saying and doing all the world-changing things of his 
gospel because a body like mine was obedient and ready 
for the dictates of his ideals. 

But that body is no more. However sincerely you love 
him, however closely you follow him, you have never 
heard the sound of his voice, never felt the touch of his 
hand, never caught the gleam of his beautiful smile, never. 
What will happen now, with his voice stilled and his 
hands broken by nails? Has death conquered him? 


Who Speaks for Him Now? 


“Now ye are the body of Christ.” It is the most 
daring of all metaphors, by the boldest artist in their 
use. Paul is solving the problem for us. Christ, says 
Paul, is willing to say his word through us, to do his 
deeds in us. We are the body of Christ. 

We start back aghast! Paul could not mean us. 
Saints with holy records of superb achievements! 


THE MIRACLE OF ME fe 


Prophets touched by the glowing coals! But not 
humble ordinary sinning folk like us! 

Careful now. To whom did Paul write this sentence? 
To the church at Corinth. A church of failure and sin, 
a church which must bow before scathing rebuke in this 
same epistle, a church bending under the fury of pagan 
lust, a church which straightened up in an ecstasy of new 
strength when Paul’s truth came home to them. And we 
who know his words are meant for us, are better Chris- 
tians after the first shock of them, when we sense their 
infinite significance. We are the body of Christ. Out of 
such humble stuff he deigns to make his miracle of serv- 
ing, saving love. If we do not say his word, it will not 
be said. If we fail to do his deeds, they will not be done. 
Syracuse will know him as we reveal him. We are the 
body of Christ. 


Differences Lost 


Are we different one from another? That is sheer 
advantage if only, in our differences, we are obedient 
to him. I find men everywhere worried because the 
church of Jesus is forced to harbor so many varied 
types. This is but the normal state of that combina- 
tion called the body. 

Years ago, when I was a very young preacher, I came 
to a conclusion. I decided that if I could ever find a 
church where every member was just like Deacon Smedes, 
I should stay there for life. Can you reconstruct, out of 
that clue, a picture of the deacon himself? A fervent, 
humble, lovable, tender spirit, with enough money to free 
him from material cares and make him a great giver, a 
gift for prayer, a hopeful aggressiveness, and a sympa- 


8 THE MIRACLE OF ME 


thetic humanity—I could leave almost any task with him, 
and be confident that it would be well done. So I 
searched for such a church made up wholly of men and 
women like Deacon Smedes. 

I have given up the search. There isn’t any such 
church. And I would not have it, if there was. For I 
have come to believe that a church made up of a single 
type would be an egregious failure in the warfare of the 
kingdom. If the whole body were an eye, how would 
you get the hearing accomplished? No. To speak the 
gospel of Jesus to this complex world, the church needs 
the services of every variety of life. 


Rich man, poor man, 
Beggar man, thief, 
Doctor, lawyer, 
Merchant, chief, 


all telling by word and deed the story of infinite redemp- 
tion. Rich men with fortunes surrendered to the Christ. 
Poor men made rich by the treasures of his love. Beggar- 
men healed by the touch of his power. Thieves redeemed 
by his pain and his blood. Doctors and lawyers minister- 
ing in his spirit. Merchants dealing in the jewels of his 
word. Chiefs made humble by his simple majesty. All 
these, and more, are not too many for the body of Jesus. 


The Sadness of Solitariness 


Have you seen one Christian trying to live all alone? 
Then you have witnessed the tragedy of separation. You 
have seen the futile hand, dead and still, lying on the deck. 
How much we need each other! 


THE MIRACLE OF ME 9 





The man who tries to be a solitary and independent 
Christian is like that individualistic sharpshooter, who, 
spurning uniforms and the compromise of obedience to 
commands, shoulders his rifle and starts out alone to help 
win the war. It is interesting, but it is not war. More 
pathetically useless and in the way is the man who claims 
to serve Christ, but has not yet found his church. Join 
up, join up, for victory’s sake! 

And then, oh, the thrill of it! The indescribable joy 
of it! Shoulder to shoulder, training and serving, shar- 
ing and bearing, waiting for his orders and doing his will. 
Suppose our city should see him clearly in his beauty. 
Would they not love him? He is waiting to reveal him- 
self in us. He will do his deeds through us. He will say 
his words through us. Without us, he is dumb and help- 
less. He is counting on us. We are the body of Christ. 


II 
THE SUICIDE OF THE CHURCH 


THERE are few tragedies more poignant than illness. 
Physicians and nurses and ministers live surrounded by 
it. It finds its way into their very souls. Homes are 
often overshadowed by it. Occasionally a whole city is 
enshrouded in the pall of it. 

To watch a ititherto healthy body in the stages of suc- 
cumbing to attacks of disease is a saddening experience. 
The silent, invisible foes, advancing with secret fiendish- 
ness; the first yielding to the initial assault; the sturdy 
defense of the white corpuscles, fighting with what might 
almost be named courage; the onrush of new forces of 
invaders; the languor of pitiful weakness; the ebb and 
flow of the battle-line as medicines and the will to live 
combine to make a “good day” of victory, or are help- 
less against their conquerors; then the terrible lifeless 
weakness, which palsies the hands, wastes the cheeks, 
sends hot tears down the courses of the face, shrivels the 
lips, muffles the voice into a faint whisper, and glazes the 
eyes with a frightening brilliance—these make up a drama 
which begins and ends upon the note of sober tragedy. 


The Real Horror 


Yet all this is as nothing compared with the tragedy of 
suicide. For with illness there is always hope. On every 
side are people recovering their strength and building up 
10 


THE SUICIDE OF THE CHURCH 1] 


into health despite the encroachments of enemy germs. 
This morning’s prescription, this afternoon’s determina- 
tion, may swing the tide toward victory. But suicide is 
black with utter hopelessness. Here is a healthy body, 
successfully resisting the assaults of invading germs. 
The mind is thronged with those normal difficulties of 
decision. Clashes of desire are frequent, but are always 
submitted at last to a dominating will, and the conflict 
results in a fusing of mental elements which make up 
personality. But suddenly there is the eruption of a 
revolution within. One desire or one set of desires de- 
mands right of way through the life without hindrance. 
Heedless of consequence, unwilling to submit to the 
arbitrament of reason, unable to hear the claims of any 
contrary wish which finds expression in the life, this 
desire raises its brutal head over the mental experiences, 
howls its insistence down through the corridors of the 
brain, summons all its strength for a stupendous assault 
not only upon conflicting ideas but also upon the life 
itself, hurling out its defiance, “If I cannot have my way, 
I shall see to it that no one else has his!” This is the 
tragedy of suicide, the deepest tragedy of all. The 
process may be swift or slow, the phenomenon is the 
same. De Quincey, with his world-roaming mind and his 
vast store of beautifully mastered learning, may kill him- 
self slowly through decades of opium-poison ; Chatterton, 
boy-poet, at eighteen among the immortals of English 
literature with his magnificent Balade of Charitie, may 
snuff out his life with one quick gulp of arsenic in a 
moment of madness. What has actually happened is 
this: some revolutionary desire has scorned delay and 
opposition, has asserted itself as lord of the mind, has 


12 _ ‘THE MIRACLE OF ME 





defied control, and has brought down upon itself, in the 
spectacular crash of mighty ruins, the life which could 
not yield. ‘The desire was not satisfied. It was defeated 
in the defeat of the life. But even this consideration 
could not halt it. It died in the death which it designed. 
Like blind Samson, its own strength, poured forth upon 
others, killed itself. 

Men die this way. Nations die this way. Churches 
die this way. Oh, the throbbing tragedy of it! 


An Ancient Tragedy 


It was this tragedy which Moses was called upon to 
witness as a young man upon the desert plains of 
Egypt. The text of the day, from a sermon in the 
Acts, is a reflection of the events of that epoch-making 
week when Moses faced his destiny, under the guidance 
of Jehovah. After those years of luxury and training 
and power in the court of Pharaoh, his soul is suddenly 
illumined by the dream of God’s mission for him. With 
a great gesture of superb abnegation, he turns away from 
the promising high-road of Egyptian glory, and prepares 
to yield himself for the freeing of his people, the down- 
trodden slaves of the realm. As he loses himself in the 
glory of his selfless determination, he sees, enacted before 
him, a miniature representation of the conflict. An 
Egyptian master is flogging his Israelitish slave, and the 
slave is cringing before the brute blows. Moses leaps 
upon the assailant, tears him to death in a frenzy of 
resentment, buries the dead body under a mound of sand, 
and shrugging his shoulders, walks away. His dedica- 
tion to his people’s cause is stronger than ever. He has 


THE SUICIDE OF THE CHURCH 13 


been witnessing a tragedy, but it was the tragedy of ill- 
ness, and there was hope that the enemies of his own 
race might, with patience and courage, be overcome. 

The next day, however, he was forced to see another 
tragedy. He came upon two of his own people contend- 
ing one with another. The ferocity of their blows, the 
curses from their lips, the steely glitter in their eyes, horri- 
fied him. They had forgotten the Egyptians, they had 
forgotten their God-given destiny, for some petty, trivial 
issue they were slaughtering each other. With the hollow 
voice of a heart-broken, disillusioned prophet, he said: 
“Sirs, ye are brethren; why do ye wrong one to an- 
other?” Like savage curs, they turned on him, snarling 
in their rage, and then hurled themselves into their con- 
flict again. Brother fought against brother. Suicide had 
begun at the heart of his nation. 


Broken on the Wheel 


His dream shattered, his hopes gone, he walked away 
sobbing. And for forty years he waited, in a far-off 
land, until the bitterness of that scene was blotted out, 
and he had found courage again for his tasks. 

I watch homes broken into fragments by the fury of 
independent desires that will not be harmonized. I watch 
churches, bickering over futile incidentals, while the 
Egyptians who lord it over us sneer at our petty childish- 
ness and chuckle at the ease with which they hold us 
captives. There is no more heart-breaking experience in 
all the world. Pastors have died on the rack of it—this 
reasonless, blind, bull-headed determination to rule or: to 
wreck, which sometimes besets the life of a growing, 
serving church. | 7 


14 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





The Illness of the Church 


It is tragic enough to see illness in the life of ax 
church. The symptoms are common enough to be 
easily recognized. To see the neighborhood passing 
by in scorn and jest; to watch the germs. of discour- 
agement and doubt and disappointment and defeat in- 
vading; to witness dwindling crowds and emptying 
pews; to glimpse the signs of shabbiness which betray 
meager treasuries and mounting expense; to hear the 
voice of fervent prayer becoming the frightened whis- 
per of hoarse despair; to notice the glaze of death in 
the spiritual eyes—all this is terrible. But there is 
always hope. And no man should shrink from a 
chance of helping. This is the battle which lures 
men’s souls into the ranks of the church. A fair 
chance is all a man asks. Doubt and lust and discour- 
agement may be driven back; a new voice may send 
a clarion message echoing down through the city’s 
life; next Sunday may be the turning-point; daylight 
and victory may be just around the next jog in the 
road! This is illness, that is all. Nothing hopeless 
here, Only a splendid challenge to faith. 


The Darkest Fate 


But suicide—oh, the tragedy of suicide! When a 
church is at the height of its happy career, when a city’s 
eyes, yes a nation’s eyes, are upon her, when her building 
throbs with a hundred Christly deeds of comradeship, 
when crowds of hungry souls throng her courts, pleading 
in silence for the bread of life at her outstretched hands— 


THE SUICIDE OF THE CHURCH 15 





to see that church unable to control her rebel desires 
within the limits of her own life in Christ is enough to 
make angels weep. 

I would not have you all of the same mind. The flat 
monotony of people so much alike that they never differed 
would condemn any church to the bloodless quiet of in- 
nocuous desuetude. The strong souls are never the ones 
who had no trouble making decisions. The great spiritual 
achievers were constantly in the turmoil of mental con- 
flict. Paul wrestled through the years, the sweat upon 
his brow, the muscles taut in frenzied effort, the veins 
and arteries standing out like great welts in his flesh, 
fighting like a demon to keep his refractory body under. 
Luther hurled inkwells at a devil so real in his temptation 
that the bewildered monk could see him leering from a 
dark corner in his study. Peter ebbed and flowed like a 
stupendous tide, from the heights of glorious courage to 
the depths of dark despair. Wesley was swept by the 
buffeting winds of passion till the day of his death. But 
they, one and all, would not surrender their lives to rebel 
desires. They set their faces like flint, and they would 
not be turned aside. They had no placid drama staged 
behind their brows. They were made great by the stress 
of decisions. But once a decision was made by the life, 
conflicting desires gave way and joined in the appointed 
course. The fusion of elements was accomplished, and 
the life went on in confidence. 


The Storm of Decision 


The great churches have never been the quiet, placid 
ones. Have no undue fear. There is a way to decision. 
Let all conflicting desires fairly and frankly submit them- 


16 THE MIRACLE OF ME 


selves to the high tribunal of the mind of the church. 
Let them clash without restraint. Let them resolve them- 
selves, if they will, into fused action. Let real disputes 
find reasonable solution by comparison with the mind of 
Jesus and by a willingness to yield to the judgment of the 
head. Let us keep back nothing, conceal nothing. The 
result will be a frankness of unity and a strength of 
resolution which can come no other way. But let nobody 
ever say or think, “If I cannot have my way, I shall see 
to it that nobody else has his.” ‘That is the acme of folly. 
Never once has a whisper of this spirit reached my ears. 
It never will, please God. For that is suicide. 

Zona Gale has said it aptly in a wonderful paragraph: 


The way isn’t so much to try to love each other, 
Which other folks’ peculiarities is awfully in the way of, 
But for all of us to pitch in and love something altogether, 
Your town, or your young folks, or your church, 

Or keeping something clean 

Or making something look nice— 
And before you know it you’re loving the folks you work with 
No matter how peculiar, or even more so. 


Surely, we who boast that we love Jesus dare not mock 
him by flaunting our tiny differences and breaking his 
heart. 


The Glory of the Church 


Often I walk down-town to the church by way of 
Cedar Street, and as I swing into the broad expanse of 
Court House Circle [ am caught breathless again and 
again by the sheer beauty of this church of ours. In all 
weathers, under all skies, in the throb of busy noon or 
the stillness of deserted night, that superb white tower 


THE SUICIDE OF THE CHURCH 17 


lifts its height like a proud challenge to the selfishness of 
- Christless men, a gesture pointing up toward the love of 
God. My heart is exalted by the glory of it. We who 
love it together—God forbid that we should choose the 
way of death. 

Often I come upon our church as I walk the shaded 
streets of memory. I see the humble service, the selfless 
giving, the indomitable courage, the noble preaching, the 
tears of disappointed anguish, the prayers of beseeching 
yearning, the love and the strength which through the 
weary years made this shrine possible. I am silent at 
the wonder of it. We who wonder at it together—God 
forbid that we should choose the way of death. 

Often I see it as I walk the broad highway of the 
future. Out of its life, planted at the heart of our great 
and growing city, I see influences mounting which shall 
some day bring Syracuse captive to our Lord Christ 
Jesus. Little children laugh and sing, old faces smile in 
confidence, men trust and love each other; there is no 
hunger, no pain, no death any more. The light of the 
New Jerusalem makes our streets shine like gold. Jesus 
reigns. I bow my head before the bright beauty of it, 
and my ears hear the happy echoes of angels singing. 
This we may do, if we are faithful: This Christ 1s leav- 
ing with us to do. We who love him together, we whose 
lives are his in the fulness of glad surrender—God forbid 
that we should choose the way of death. 


IIT 
A LIVING WAGE FOR CHRISTIANS 


THE greatest game in the world is business. And the 
richest thrill which life holds must come to the man who 
plays a fine, rule-abiding sportsmanlike game and wins. 
It is a thrill which no mere preacher can ever share. Two 
years in big business taught me that before I began to 
preach. 

To be able to keep costs down, prices low, dividends 
attractive, and quality excellent, is no mean achievement 
in these madly competitive days. To search the world 
for raw material and buy it skilfully at decent advantage; 
to complete a product which can compete with others in 
the same class on the basis of price demand; to balance 
the factors of production so that with price still compet- 
ingly low you are enabled to attract capital for supporting 
your enterprise by the profit you pay; and at the end to 
be able to sink back with the assurance that you have not 
cheated in quality, that your labels have not lied, that no 
shoddy goods nor poor workmanship will be revealed in 
the tests of use—this game brings its own reward in joy. 
At least, it did in days gone by. 


Is the Zest Gone? 


The most amazing thing to me about modern in- 
dustry is the apparent loss of the game’s thrill. 1 
18 


A LIVING WAGE FOR CHRISTIANS 19 





think it has come about because competition has fixed 
the lines of its four fundamental demands, and has 
erased that sense of creative energy in the organization 
of production. Men have no choice now. They must 
keep costs low, prices right, dividends attractive, and 
quality high, or they will be throttled by economic 
pressure. The rules of the game have become prison 
bars, and men are locked up in cells of competitive 
necessity. It is no wonder that the zest has gone from 
the sport of business. 

There is one field, however, where the competition 
which is the life of trade may yet have its place. It 
is the field of wages. These industrial generals who 
simply must keep prices low and costs moderate and 
dividends steady and quality high, are allowed free 
scope in one sphere of the problem. They may have 
the supreme sport of doing all the necessary things, 
and at the same time paying good wages. And the 
old thrill will come back if they are vying with one 
another in the quality of life they produce for their 
workers. 


A New Industrial Idea 


This is a new concept—the living wage. It is to our 
shame that the concept is new. We have allowed eco- 
nomic law to force industry into obedient respect for 
costs and prices and dividends and quality, while the 
greater spiritual law of decent life has been silent by 
default. It is for the church to insist that no industry 
be allowed to survive in self-respect while it erects its 
structure of success upon the broken bodies and shattered 
lives of its employees. It is for the church to point to 


20 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





this new sport for ambitious millionaires—the sport of 
adding to all their other products the product of happy 
life for the workers. 

I have recently read a paper-covered book issued by 
the Ford Motor Company, celebrating Ford’s pride in his 
achievements. Of the sixty-four pages, twenty-six are 
given over to his pride in his car and his factories. In- 
tricate descriptions of processes and results fill the pages. 
But the remaining thirty-eight pages out of sixty-four 
treat of his pride in his men. The words describe his joy 
in the wages he is able to pay, his insistence that once a 
man enters his shops he be given a chance to make good 
in every department of the works until he finds some 
place where he fits, and that no employee be discharged 
until he has failed to fit anywhere. The story of his 
schools for foreign workers, the description of his at- 
tempts to fit crippled veterans somewhere into his indus- 
trial process—these things reveal a man who has found 
intense satisfaction in this new sport. He is aglow with 
the joy of making men. Ford men seem more important 
to him than Ford cars. Does that surprise you? Your 
very stirprise is a commentary on ordinary industrial 
callousness. Who first taught mankind the monstrous 
lie that human life could be outweighed by any product? 


What About the Church? 


The church must assume responsibility for insisting 
that the living wage is a proper and necessary industrial 
concept. It has been exaggerated and caricatured almost 
beyond recognition. But the idea is fundamentally cor- 
rect. Below a certain level of economic compensation, 


A LIVING WAGE FOR CHRISTIANS 21 





life is an intolerable, beastly drudgery. No industry has 
a right to crush life into that drudgery. If an industry 
menaces the level of costs, prices, dividends, or quality, it 
is automatically ruined by the operation of economic law. 
It cannot maintain its market. If an industry, for the 
sake of costs, prices, dividends, or quality, menaces the 
level of human living, the church must lift its voice in 
rebuke. Such an industry cannot maintain its self- 
respect. 

More important than that, if the industry refuses to 
hear the voice of the church, then Christian sentiment, 
after fair warning, has a right to call a strike that will 
ensure just action. 

I am about to call a strike today—a strike for higher 
wages on behalf of the lowest paid workers in the world. 
I shall demand decent compensation for a down-trodden 
class. 


A Strike for Ministers? 


You may surmise that I refer to the ministers. I 
might make out a fair case for them. For it is a mere 
matter of statistics to establish the shameful facts. In 
the recent railroad strike, four classifications of em- 
ployees went out, demanding higher rates of pay. 
Three of these classifications were at that time receiving 
higher annual wages than the average annual salary of 
the ministers in the highest paid denomination in 
America. I am not insisting that railroad men should 
not strike. Jam insisting that ministers have a fair case 
themselves. 

But there is a class of workers which interests me far 
more than the ministers—a class now attempting to sur- 


22 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





vive on pitiful starvation wages. Something must be done 
for them. I call a strike involving all CHRISTIANS. 


Starvation Wages 


What are the wages of a Christian? The answer may 
be put in one word, souls. Do you remember the old 
days when the coming of a new pastor was regularly pre- 
ceded by a prayer from a deacon, “ Lord, give him souls 
for his hire”? That prayer reached deep into the reality 
of Christian compensation. Do you recall that prophetic 
allusion to Christ, ‘‘ He shall see of the travail of his soul 
and be satisfied”? It was another picture of the same 
truth. Jesus was to look back upon the issues of his life, 
and be content with the wages for his efforts. And these 
wages were to be paid in the currency of souls redeemed. 

What, then, is a reasonable minimum wage in souls? 
Let us be very modest. Think how long a year is. 
Think how many people throng around us, who know not 
the Christ. Surely a decent wage cannot be less than 
one soul a year won to Jesus. 

Now consider this fact. What is the actual average 
wage of a Christian? Exactly one-fortieth of a soul each 
year. Statistics point the way to accurate computation. 
This is the mathematical fact. The average Christian 
receives just one-fortieth of a minimum expectation 
needed to support decent life. He must live forty years 
before he wins one soul to Jesus. And this without 
allowing for the stupendous contributions to the general 
average recorded by those magnificent evangelists and 
fishers of men who number their returns by thousands 
each year. 


A LIVING WAGE FOR CHRISTIANS 23 





Is it any wonder that life withers and dies? Are we 
surprized that Christian societies and churches and indi- 
viduals are spiritually starving? They simply cannot 
exist on such ridiculously low pay. 


Why Faith Is Jaded 


I am not now considering the problem of evangelism 
in the midst of the great need of the world. I am not 
now discussing how much sinners need a Saviour, nor 
how much the church needs new supplies of personnel 
and power. I am thinking about how much Christians 
need the wages of evangelism; how we are deprived of 
our just returns in souls for our hire; how we starve in 
the famine of spiritual drought. We have forgotten how 
it feels to be recreated by the experience of soul-winning. 

There was a day when Jesus, worn by a long journey 
through the hot sun, sat on the wall of a well, outside a 
Samaritan city. His shoulders were drooping with 
fatigue, his hands hung limp, there was no sparkle in his 
eyes, his voice was hoarse and tired, as he sent his dis- 
ciples into the village to buy food. 

When they came back, with their purchases, they were 
amazed at the change in him. He wasa new man. He 
sat erect and ready, his shoulders straight, his eyes flash- 
ing, his voice vibrant and eager. 

“Master, here is the food,” they say. 

“No food now,” he replies. 

“Has some one brought you refreshment while we were 
gone?” 

“T have meat to eat that ye know not of.” 

“Jesus, master, tell us, what has given you this new 
strength? What has recreated you?” 


24 THE MIRACLE OF ME 


He has talked with a sin-stained woman, and has 
claimed her life in fealty to the things of God. Only 
this. But it has transformed him. 


Recreation 


I have seen Billy Sunday stagger from the conclusion 
of a sermon, utterly exhausted. No shred of energy left. 
Then the old trombone began to play, and the invitation 
hymn floated out like a cloud of sweet incense, and people 
began to come down the saw-dust trail. A flood of power 
swept into that limp body, his eyes brightened. Billy 
leaped to his feet and grasped outstretched hands with a 
fervor of joy. ! 

O you of jaded faith! O you whose lives have 
withered into dry hopelessness! O you to whom 
Christ’s figure seems a misty thing of distance and doubt! 
Try this experiment. Find some one who knows less 
about Jesus than you do. Begin quite simply and frankly 
to speak a word of testimony for him. Waves of joy 
and strength will engulf your soul. You will begin to 
collect your just wages. 

A strike, then! Up with the red flag of rebellion! 
Down with this cowardly laziness which robs us of our 
just deserts! Away with this devil’s device called 
modesty which makes us dumb before our brother’s need! 
Let us free ourselves forever from these sneering cheats 
who starve our lives. We shall gain our rights! A 
living wage for Christians! 


IV 
THE RELIGION OF KING TUT 


WE are three thousand miles away. We have banished 
the rigor of northern skies and the chill of swift winds. 
We are under the blazing heat of an Egyptian sun. The 
air is still. It is near noon. 

Spread before us is a valley which seems at first glance 
to be unutterably prosaic. Vegetation is sparse and 
undernourished. Scrubby little half-trees lift their dis- 
couraged heads and seem too far gone to pant for breath. 
Tufts of dried, crisp grass struggle up into the gleaming 
light. Sand, glistening with sunshine, is heaped about in 
careless profusion, its surface broken by gaunt rocks here 
and there. Down through the valley runs a pathetic, out- 
worn gully, where once water flowed. But today, the 
stream is only a memory and a taunt. For the reminder 
of the purling brook which once laughed through this 
scene, makes today’s desolate desert even more utterly 
hopeless. We are in the Valley of the Kings. Near-by 
is Egypt’s proud city, Luxor. 


Secrets of Three Thousand Years 


Those heaps of soil and stone and sand which mar the 
expanse of the valley, seem like huge geologic remnants, 
the jest of a creative exuberance. The only signs of 
activity seem to center at a little black hole dug into one 

25 


26 THE MIRACLE OF ME 


of these ugly lumps. We hurry to the place. There is 
the sound of men burrowing within. If we understand 
the scene, we pause with something of awe clutching our 
hearts. These men are penetrating the secrets of three 
thousand years. This is the tomb of a Pharaoh. No 
man has invaded these precincts of the dead since the last 
rites were performed. Here lies the body of Tut-Ankh- 
Amen. The world is waiting for the news his burial 
place will disclose. And a pert America has blandly 
named him with an abbreviation of its own—King Tut. 
Men are studying the pictures for their art. They are 
examining the mummy for its chemistry. They are evalu- 
ating the jewels for their probable price on the gem 
market. They are reading the inscriptions for their his- 
tory. They are eager for the information on home life 
and customs gleaned from clothes and furniture. But 
we are missing the real point. | 


Not Art but Religion 


This tomb is Religion. Its implications are in all 
fields ; but its motive was religious faith, and its meaning 
can be read only in terms of religion. The king whose 
wishes this mound represents was not planning for the 
honor of chemistry or history or archeology. He was 
speaking forth his faith. What was the religion of King 
Tut? 


The Threat of a Thousand Gods 


We are entering the'tomb. The opening is low. We 
feel a rush of cool, shadowy air. The sunlight is blotted 
out. We cannot see. Then our eyes clear. Flickering 


THE RELIGION OF KING TUT 27 


torches are held aloft. We are inside a huge coffinlike 
chamber twelve feet wide and high, with a length of 
twenty feet. The walls of this room are covered with 
figures. The shadows are grotesque and significant. 
Here are the exquisite figures of Nephthys and Isis; here 
are slinking jackals and sleek cats; here are bent wings, 
and crowned heads; here are moon and stars; here is a 
huge eye, ever open, ever depicted as watching every 
corner of this hidden sarcophagus ; here is the sun, haloed 
with spear-heads of golden rays. The place is thronged 
with the images of scores of gods. 

This is not primarily art; this is a man’s religion. 
This is the expression of a mind bewildered by the tragic 
complexities of many gods. Everything was inhabited, 
controlled, managed by some god or other. The beasts 
were gods; the winds were gods; the seasons were gods; 
the moon was a god; this silent, deep-flowing river, with 
its great seasonal flood of alluvial fertility, and its raven- 
ous gnawings at fields and homes and families, was a 
fickle, abundance-bringing, disaster-giving god. My 
tribe had a god. So had your tribe. Perhaps my god 
was stronger than yours. But if you beat me in battle, 
your god put mine under subjection and demonstrated 
his superior power. Life was a long attempt to solve 
the puzzle, to discover the proper rites and ceremonies 
for the favor of a really influential god. Just now, the 
sun happened to be in the predominant position, as far 
as could be determined. So the sun was the chief god 
of Tut’s faith. The only possible sense of control in life 
came when a man succeeded in gaining the favor of a god 
who seemed to produce results. Even then, tomorrow 
might sweep him into servitude and his worshipers into 


28 _ THE MIRACLE OF ME 





desolation. A terrible, disordered phantasmagoria of un- 
intelligible whims, and indestructible jealousies—this was 
the environment of life. And the walls of this tomb are 
mute evidence of this intolerable existence. We look 
upon the gallery of King Tut’s many gods. 

And we seem to hear the voice of Jesus echoing over 
the hills and valleys of time: “God is a spirit, and they 
that worship him must worship him in spirit and in 
truth. .. When ye pray, say ‘ Our Father,’ ” 


The Instinct of Immortality 


Our eyes are becoming accustomed now to the half- 
darkness, and we are beginning to see the rich treasures 
which crowd the chamber. Here are deeply carved beds, 
footstools of gorgeous design, soft fabrics of lovely color, 
jewels and sculptures, flowers and ferns, dishes of trans- 
lucent beauty, coins of rare value, carefully preserved 
vessels of the king’s favorite food sealed for use; here 
is a heap of gems valued at $15,000,000; here is a precious 
alabaster vase, shaped like a chalice, as beautiful as any 
vase in the world, seen at last after three thousand years 
of hiding which had kept it from mortal eye. And if 
King Tut had gained his way, no one should have seen 
it in all the reaches of time, until at the end he came back 
himself to claim the beauty he had loved in life. 

Something had taught men’s minds that death did not 
end all. It seems like a naive but logical deduction from 
the experience of sleep. Here lies a man asleep. He 
seems to be dead. Only the regular, slow breathing tells 
us that he will soon awake. Rouse him. He lives again. 
Ask him where he has been. He will tell you of far 


THE RELIGION OF KING TUT 29 





journeyings. He has been hunting in a magnificent for- 
est. He has been riding in a clattering chariot. He has 
been feasting in gorgeous halls. Tell him that all the 
time he slept you were watching him and that he was 
lying there upon his couch, quietly breathing, with eyes 
closed. He will laugh and reply, “I do not know what 
you were watching, but I know that I was a thousand 
miles away.” And you begin to think. What was gone 
while he was sleeping? Where does that thing go when 
he dies? Is not death a sleep, longer and deeper than 
our nightly resting? Shall we not come back, as in the 
morning we return to our waiting bodies? Dreams—they 
were not then called dreams—told men first about a soul 
that survived. 

If, then, King Tut’s life is but a prelude to a new life 
after the waking from death, then all his efforts must be 
bent toward making preparations for that return. The 
tomb must be stocked for the exigencies of the next exis- 
tence. The king’s favorite dishes must be cooked and 
sealed away, ready to tempt his hunger. Coins must be 
heaped high, so that he may pay his royal way. The soft 
couches, the comfortable beds, the favored chairs, the 
well-loved garments must be kept from too much use 
here, and must be preserved against the intrusion of other 
men. The objects of beauty which delighted the king’s 
eyes must be enjoyed by no one after he goes, lest there 
be less for him to enjoy when he comes back. Life 
returns. Save up for it. Hoard your stocks for it. 
Accumulate toward it. The more you can safely collect 
now and maintain as yours against all comers, the more 
you can anticipate for your use and joy when you come 
back. Give away nothing you can possibly keep; every 


BO was THE MIRACLE OF ME 





deed of sharing condemns you to poverty when next you 
begin to live. Every merciful act impoverishes you for 
eternity ; every selfish achievement means riches for the 
hereafter. The way to succeed is to collect and keep. 
These treasures are a gesture of religious faith. Here 
is a man who thought he was making himself safe for 
eternity. 

And across the hills and valleys of time I seem to hear 
the voice of Jesus saying: “Lay not up for yourselves 
treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, 
and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up 
for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth 
nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break 
through nor steal; for where your treasure is, there will 
your heart be also.” 

O King Tut, moth and rust did not invade, but the 
thieves are upon you and your treasures; and they are 
quarreling among themselves over their loot as they 
despoil you! 


A Faith Built On Cruelty 


We can see easily now. Our eyes are clear and ac- 
curate after these moments in the gloom, and these 
hoarded stores can be examined for their detailed 
beauty. Here are carvings in gold, exquisite in tech- 
nique; here are paintings which meant the work of 
years ; here are boxes woven in carefully plaited rush- 
work; here are vases molded by master hands; here 
are fabrics of lovely softness and richness of color. 
The labor of hundreds of women made these garments, 
these dainties, these jewel designs. The skill of hun- 
dreds of craftsmen produced these thrones and 


THE RELIGION OF KING TUT ot 





couches. The backs of a thousand slaves bent under 
the rocks and sand which were thrown together on 
this great heap. Men and women were pawns in the 
stupendous game of King Tut’s faith. 

People are to be used, to the limit of their usefulness, 
these treasures are saying. There is not enough 
wealth, not enough labor to make many of us rich. 
Let the fortunate and powerful ones spend their time 
then in amassing greater fortunes and more power. 
The more slaves you have and the harder you work 
them, the softer will be your fate in the unborn to- 
morrow. Use your armies to enslave new tribes; fill 
your quarters with impoverished captives; use the 
priests for your own desires; have as many wives as 
possible and use them for the breeding of a powerful 
family, so that your sons and daughters may help to 
keep your treasures away from the robber bands who 
may invade your tomb. There is no room here for 
love or brotherhood. Life is a sordid effort after 
power and pelf. Weaklings must stand out of the way 
or be crushed. On with the Juggernauts of power. 
Bend your backs, you slaves! I must be rich in the 
hereafter. 

And I seem to hear the voice of Jesus saying, “I 
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to 
give my life a ransom for many.” 


The Great Illusion 


We have not yet reached the heart of the tomb. There 
is a small masonry chamber, sealed with elaborate pre- 
caution; every joint in the stone-work has been closed 


32 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





with skilfully compounded pitch; within that is a metal- 
covered coffin; and within the coffin a mummied body. 
The arts and sciences of generations have joined in this 
masterpiece of care; the traditions of a thousand priests 
have blended in this attempt. The dead body has been 
embalmed with meticulous technique; every trace of cor- 
ruption has been removed; then a great winding-ribbon 
of impregnated cloth has been wrapped about the still 
form, band upon band swathing the limbs, the trunk, the 
head. Nothing could intrude into this flesh. These hands 
must be ready to handle old beauties; these eyes must 
look out upon loved scenes; these lips must be parted just 
before the cloth closes over them, so that they may be 
ready for eating at the moment of waking. This is im- 
mortality. So to protect one’s body from the shocks of 
time that it will be intact and perfect when the new 
life begins. This is a strictly consistent gesture of 
faith. If you want to save life—save it, preserve it, 
protect it. 

A French doctor stood in the center of a crowd the 
other day, and waited while representatives of three gov- 
ernments pinned on his coat medals of honor for valor. 
He had been an expert in X-rays. Twenty years before, 
a spot in his right hand showed him that the rays had 
begun their assaults upon him. His friends told him to 
stop his experiments. “No,” said he, “this is what I 
know best. The world may be better if I keep on and 
find out what I can.” They amputated his right hand; 
cut away his arm to the elbow; took off the joint to the 
shoulder. Then his left hand gave way. He persisted. 
Amputation after amputation followed. He stood there, 
that day, his empty sleeves hanging limp from two tiny 


THE RELIGION OF KING TUT 33 





stumps, the verdict ringing in his mind, “ A few months, 
and you must die!” 

What of that, King Tut? Are you horrified at sight 
of a man who deliberately gives his life, that his fellows 
may be spared pain? Are you saying, “ He will have 
no arms when he lives again’? 

I seem to hear the voice of Jesus: “ Whosoever will 
save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life 
for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.” 

You are wrong, King Tut. He that would save his life 
must will to lose it in the service of the world’s need. He 
that would save his life by careful precautions of pre- 
serving will find that he has lost it at the end. Time has 
his way at last with the pitiful, wistful protests of King 
Tut’s mummy wrappings ; but time is powerless to destroy 
the glory of a sacrifice made for the race of men. This 
is the truest of immortalities; this is the glory of Jesus; 
this is the paradox of eternity. 


Jesus and Pharaoh 


How the faith of Jesus shines against the gloomy back- 
ground of King Tut’s poor religion. How that loving 
communion with God the Father puts to shame the be- 
wildered gropings of a frightened mind in a world of a 
thousand jealous deities; how the penniless Jesus, rich 
in the spiritual treasures of the centuries, rebukes the 
hoarding Pharaoh; how the Servant of All makes gaudily 
tinseled the pretensions of the haughty monarch of 
men; how the sacrificial, self-forgetful immortality of 
Christ comments on the eager striving of that pitiable 
mummy. 


34 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





Yet how earnestly King Tut believed his own poor 
faith. How deliberately he spent his years living it into 
action. And how dully and coolly many of us lag on 
after the banner of Jesus, when our lives should be surg- 
ing into the conflict and passion of his faith. No one can 
view the stupendous monument which this deluded 
Pharaoh erected to his religion without a blush of shame 
at the realization of our own lukewarm carelessness about 
the revelations of Jesus. Perhaps we need, now and then, 
to see what men once believed and how energetically they 
lived their faith, in order to appreciate the superb gifts of 
Jesus and the right he has to kingship in our lives. 


The Tragedy of Ahknaton 


For the real tragedy revealed by this tomb is not 
King Tut’s at all. It is the tragedy of Ahknaton, the 
most wistful and beautiful figure of antiquity, the first 
lovable personality to rise above the mists of arche- 
ology. Those of you who have followed King Tut’s 
story will know that Tut was not born of the royal line. 
He reached the throne of the Pharaohs because he 
married the daughter of a Pharaoh who died without 
leaving sons to take the royal scepter. This sonless King, 
whose daughter brought a crown to Tut, was Ahknaton, 
only a few years before Tut in the unfolding of Egypt’s 
history. 

Ahknaton had taken the throne under another name. 
His parents had called him Amen-Hotep, “a royal wor- 
shiper of Amen,” and his name honored the sun-god, 
whose rule all Egypt acknowledged as being above all 
other gods. Through some circumstances, whose details 


THE RELIGION OF KING TUT 35 





we cannot trace, this boy-king had been inspired with 
great treasures of spiritual truth. Bearing a name which 
bound him to the old dynasties of competing gods, he 
came to believe that there was but one god, a god of the 
spirit. So Amen-Hotep changed his pagan name to 
Ahknaton, which told every one that he was a believer 
in one true god of the spirit. He caused to be erased 
from the records of his reign all mention of the sun-god 
and the minor deities whose worship he had inherited. 
He wrote a psalm, which when placed side by side with 
our One Hundred and Fourth Psalm seems almost like 
a foreshadowing in thought and language. He summed 
up his faith in a sentence which might have come from 
Jesus’ conversation in Matthew—“ Thou art the mother 
and father of all thou hast made.” 


The Light that Failed 


By some clairvoyance of spiritual insight, he became 
convinced of the ultimate reality of selfless achievement, 
he refused to pile up stores of selfishly accumulated trea- 
sures, he stood committed to brotherhood among men, 
he wrote a code of ethical conduct touched with the glory 
of Christly love; and so sure was he of the spiritual 
nature of the universe that he refused to ask that his 
body be mummified. Where this revelation began, how 
it grew in his mind, we cannot tell. We know he had it. 
One thousand years before Jesus, a man stands out upon 
the horizon of history as having found the truth about 
God. 

And his tragedy? Simply this. He failed to tell it. 
Why, we do not know. Perhaps lost in contemplation of 


36 THE MIRACLE OF ME 


the glory, he supposed it would conquer without any par- 
ticular effort on his part. This much we do know. A 
few short years pass after his death, and his truth is for- 
gotten. His light is blotted out. His revelation has dis- 
appeared from the minds and hearts of men. 

A Pharaoh rules who in his life flaunts before the 
world a pagan name, Tut-Ankh-Amen, “TI serve the sun- 
god ‘Amen’ before all other gods.” Dying, this pagan 
King Tut leaves a great mound of stones and sand which 
covers a memorial of trust in the old sordid faith of a 
materialistic universe. Akhnaton’s own daughters have 
taken upon themselves names after heathen deities; and 
Egypt has slipped back into the shadowed roads of 
ancient superstition, menaced by a thousand leering 
demons, urged on by a lust for possession and power, 
robbed of redeeming brotherliness, fearful lest one shred 
of body rot away in the service of others. 

We do not know how God selects his chosen people. 
We do know that chosen people may choose to slip back 
into darkness and despair. We cannot tell how God lays 
his hand upon a prophet. We do know that a prophet 
may forfeit his calling without outbreaking sin or over- 
weening pride—he may lose his royal calling by doing 
simply NOTHING. 

Hear the echoes of it from this newly opened tomb! 
Truth is not automatically victorious. The revelations of 
Jesus may be overwhelmed by generations of faithlessness 
unless we who know and love him tell it. 


o 


If you would win others from sin and from woe, 
Tell it wherever you go! 


V 
WHAT ARE YOU WORTH? 


I NEVER meet new people, never speak to new audiences, 
without having rise unbidden in my mind a very im- 
pertinent and embarrassing question: What are you 
worth? The great trouble with that question is that it 
uses the second person pronoun. And the great trouble 
with the second person pronoun is that it sounds the same 
in the singular and the plural. Whenever I dare to voice 
the question, you begin to think, “ What are we worth? ” 
That is not the idea at all. I want you to think, “ What 
am I worth?” One by one, you alone, what are YOU 
worth? 


Science Replies 


Science has recently suggested an answer. Chemi- 
cal experts have discovered that the average man who is 
five feet ten inches in height and weighs one hundred and 
fifty pounds, contains just enough fat for seven bars of 
soap, enough iron for two ten-penny nails, enough salt to 
season one hard-boiled egg, enough sugar for one cup of 
coffee, enough lime to whitewash one medium-sized 
chicken coop, and enough sulphur to rid one Pomeranian 
dog of fleas. This whole collection of junk is worth just 
ninety-eight cents, and that in these days when prices are 
three times as high as they ought to be. Sixty-six cents 
a hundred pounds, on the hoof, as is, f. o. b. Syracuse, 
New York. Of course, the only real objection to a com- 

37 


38 THE MIRACLE OF ME 


putation like that is its untruth. It makes the big Welsh 
grenadier, who stands in the ranks of the Welsh regi- 
ment and does no more than obey orders, worth twice as 
much as little Lloyd George, five feet two and one-half 
inches in height. Something is wrong here. You are 
not worth what you would bring as beef. 


The Answer of Business 


Economic theory says you are worth what you earn. 
The law of supply and demand sets your price. There 
are some minor exceptions, but on the whole you get just 
about what you are worth for your services. If this be 
true, there is a heavy-built, blunt-nosed, uncultured indi- 
vidual, who has not yet been able to buy his way into 
the American Legion for reasons best known to himself— 
Jack Dempsey, the heavy-weight boxing champion of the 
world—who can earn more in forty-five minutes of box- 
ing than a whole regiment of three thousand doughboys 
could earn in a whole month of trench fighting in France. 
Jack can pocket in forty-five minutes more money than 
all the doctors and all the teachers and all the preachers 
in this city of about 200,000 people can earn in forty-five 
days. No, sir, the world which believes that a man can 
be judged on the basis of what he gets for himself is a 
world that needs to be picked up by the scruff of the neck 
and introduced to the truth. 


What Did You Cost? 


Are you worth what you cost? Other things seem to 
be rated as worth approximately what they cost to pro- 
duce. Are men? If they are, consider this absurd con- 


WHAT ARE YOU WORTH? 39 








trast. The most costly man in recent generations was a 
pallid-faced, retreating-chinned individual whose name 
was Nicholas, and whose official title was Czar of Russia. 
Read the recently published Memoirs of Count Witte, 
and attempt to compute the cost of the czar. His boyish 
excursions were wild orgies of extravagant expense, his 
sea-trips were guarded by the whole Russian navy, his 
schoolrooms were hung with priceless tapestries, his books 
were decorated by the artists of the world, and tens of 
thousands of men and women slaved for years in the salt- 
mines of Siberia, that there might be produced out of 
their toil that comparatively worthless figure, the Czar 
of Russia. Meanwhile, America was producing a Lin- 
coln, who read his school-books by a flickering firelight, 
and chopped rails to pay for homespun cloth, and did not 
cost much, God knows. Men are not worth what they 
cost. 


Millionaires? 


Are you worth what you own or control? We havea 
careless way of saying, “ He is worth a hundred thou- 
sand.” If that is a fair standard, then Harry K. Thaw 
is worth more than John R. Mott, plus the Doctors Mayo 
of Rochester, Minnesota, plus Coolidge, plus Hughes, all 
tied up in a single bargain package. It is all wrong. You 
are not worth what you sell for, nor what you earn, nor 
what you cost, nor what you own. What are you worth? 


A New Valuation 


Exactly the difference you make in the sum total of 
human happiness that you leave behind you. No man is 


40 THE MIRACLE OF ME 


a gentleman unless he produces more than he consumes 
of this world’s goods. And by “ goods’ we mean happi- 
ness. No man has a right to feel comfortable about the 
balance-sheets of his life, unless he can say to himself, 
“ Well, I never made much money, and I never traveled 
very far, and the ‘four hundred’ never noticed me, but, 
God be praised, there will be a boy come along some day 
who will have a better chance at life because I lived.” 
You are worth to the world exactly the inheritance in 
happiness which you leave behind you after you go. Are 
you living a worth-while life? On the books of life, does 
your entry show you have left the world happier? 


Some Philosophers 


Perhaps you will be interested in meeting three of the 
philosophers who have taught me much about worth-while 
living. I have enjoyed studying them, partly because 
they all avoid the technical jargon of philosophic vocabu- 
laries and express themselves in a language which you 
and I can understand—the language of life. The first 
is, or rather was, Ray Chapman. He was killed in a 
baseball game several years ago, at the very climax of a 
pennant race. At bat, with Carl Mays in the box pitch- 
ing, Ray ducked his head just too late, and a swift in- 
curve hit him on the temple. He dropped where he stood, 
never to play again. He would be remembered in base- 
ball history if only because he died thus, on the field of 
conflict. But real lovers of the game will honor him 
always as the greatest sacrifice-hitter in baseball. For 
four years he led his league in the percentage of sacrifice 
hits. 


WHAT ARE YOU WORTH? 41 





For the Team 


I happen to know what a sacrifice hit is. I made one 
once. To walk out to the plate, while the crowd watches 
the runner on base, and howls to you to knock the cover 
off the ball—to get a quiet signal from your captain on 
the bench ordering you to advance the runner at any 
risk to yourself—to fight it all out with yourself as you 
stand there—then to deliberately nurse a soft bunt down 
toward third, so that you are put out, while your team- 
mate makes his base—to hear the howling complaints of 
the crowd who wanted you to push the pill over-the fence, 
to feel the hand of the captain on your shoulder as he 
says, “That was just what I wanted, old man ”—in my 
frank opinion there is no more superb gesture of the 
human spirit than the sacrifice hit, and no more wonder- 
ful reward than the realization that you have conquered 
yourself and actually done it. All that comes with one 
sacrifice hit. Think of Ray Chapman. He made a habit 
of sacrifice hitting. Day after day he could be placed 
on the batting order for the sole purpose of sacrificing 
his own fame for the sake of his team. It is the great 
need of the day. To stifle that gnawing for fame and 
applause, to work for the sake of your team, your friends, 
your shop, your lodge, your church, your association, to 
find joy in the unnoticed, unmentioned, humble services 
of every day—this is the finest of the arts, the art of the 
sacrifice hit. 


A Real Sportsman 


My second philosopher is Tris Speaker, known in base- 
ball as the man who goes after everything. This is no 


42 THE MIRACLE OF ME 


mean decoration. For the unforgivable sin in baseball is 
the error, and the playing field is divided into areas of 
responsibility which can be marked with absolute ac- 
curacy, and baseball players have surrendered to the 
temptation to play safe. Within their own garden, they 
will do their best, but if the ball is six inches over the 
other fellow’s line, they will “ Let George do it.” It is 
his trouble, then. 

Be it said to the eternal glory of Tris, that he has 
never for a moment been tempted into such an attitude 
of mind. He does more than his legal duty, he fields 
more than his own limited territory, urged on by the 
desire that his team may win. He takes his chances on 
an error without fear. Grantland Rice, the Homer of 
baseball, once said, “If a man were to let me choose 
the easiest job in baseball, I’d like to play right or left 
field while Tris Speaker plays in center.” No better 
epitaph could be selected for the gravestone of an 
achiever. ‘‘He was a good fellow to play next to.” 
Frightfully awkward so far as grammar is concerned, it 
says the fine truth eloquently. I should like to have men 
think that about me when I die. 


Unafraid of Errors 


In these days when men keep their eyes on the time- 
clocks of their jobs, when people defy the world to get 
any more work out of them than they are forced to give, I 
like to think of a man who shows once again the truth of 
Jesus’ words when he insisted that you cannot save life 
by saving it, you can only save life by sharing it with 
others. The overflowing, abundant life, said Jesus. 


WHAT ARE YOU WORTH? 43 





And old Tris stands back in center field, waiting for the 
batter to hit. The ball starts away. Tris does not stop 
to calculate whether or not it will fall in his particular 
territory. Two questions flash in his mind. Can the 
other fellow get it? No! CanI get it? Let’s go! He 
hurls that gnarled body of his across the green to the last 
inch of tremendous effort, he reaches, he leaps, he touches 
the flying ball. If he catches it, the crowds go wild. If 
he misses it, twenty pencils in the press-box write it down 
as Speaker’s error. Is it an error? It may be in the 
technicalities of baseball, but it is not in life. And Tris, 
who knows life, grins, and spits in his glove, and waits 
for the next one. 


True Contentment 


My third and last philosopher is Wilbert Robinson, who 
does not play baseball any more, but who was once the 
greatest catcher in the game. It is his fate to be charged 
with the duty of building up a baseball team with very 
little money to spend. He manages the Brooklyn team. 
He is allowed only a very small budget. Does he growl 
and complain? Does he insist that you cannot beat 
moneyed teams unless you have plenty of money? Does 
he whine in a corner and say he will not play baseball 
until he can have what he wants? He does not. Heisa 
philosopher. He takes as much money as he can get, he 
uses it as skilfully as he can, he fuses as much of himself 
into that team of cast-offs and bush-leaguers as he 
can fuse, and then he sends them out to win. And 
curiously enough, he does win a surprising number of 
times. : 


aot THE MIRACLE OF ME 





Life’s Logic 

For I have discovered that life is strangely arranged. 
The fellow who wins is very seldom the fellow who has 
everything his own way. ‘The fellow who wins takes life 
as it is, and uses it for victory. There has never been a 
life lived since the dawn of time which did not contain 
enough excuses for failure. And there has never been a 
life which did not involve enough reasons for success. 
We choose our company. And the men who prepare in 
advance, ready for use, a number of logical limitations 
which make it impossible for them to win, find that of 
course they always lose. Take what life gives you, 
change everything you can change, don’t whine, use what 
you can get for victory. 

I read a story about a farmer the other day which 
pleased me immensely. This farmer had been working 
the same farm for forty years, and he was sick and tired 
of it. He decided to sell for what he could get. So he 
sent to the near-by town for an auctioneer, and asked him 
to put the place up ata sale. The auctioneer came out to 
look over the place, took out his pencil, jotted down the 
items which he noticed, and went back to the city to pre- 
pare for the big event. The next morning the farmer went 
down to the R. F. D. box at the end of the lane, took out 
a long manila envelope, ripped it open, and found what 
seemed to be printer’s proof for an advertising poster, 
announcing a forthcoming sale. The farmer read every 
word with great interest, until he came to the last line, 
and there he read his own name. His interest turned to 
bewildered surprise. He rushed to the telephone, called 
up the auctioneer, and said, “ Js that my farm?” “ Why, 


WHAT ARE YOU WORTH? 45 





yes,” replied the super-salesman, “ whose farm did you 
think it was?” The farmer gasped. “Don’t sell that 
farm,” he shouted, “I have been looking for a farm like 
that all my life!” Life looks so alluring at a distance—so 
prosaic, near at hand. Yet the real masters of life have 
schooled themselves to the discipline of actually finding 
inspiration where they are forced to work. The poetry 
of today is the victor’s song. 


Hire an Auctioneer 


When I see jaded and dejected men, discouraged and 
down-hearted women, assailing circumstances with the 
lukewarm energy which is half-beaten before it begins to 
fight, I wish I could send for an auctioneer. Make an 
auctioneer of yourself for a few minutes. Try to sell 
your life to somebody else. Draw up an ad announcing 
its most salable features. Then tear up that old ad and 
throw it into the waste-paper basket, and fight through 
to victory with what you have. This is the smiling mes- 
sage of Wilbert Robinson. 

Edgar Rowland Sill put it in poetry when he wrote: 


This I beheld or dreamed it in a dream— 

There spread a cloud of dust along a plain; 

And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged 

A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords 
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince’s banner 
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. 
A craven hung along the battle’s edge, 

And thought, “ Had I a sword of keener steel— 
That blue blade that the king’s son bears—but this 
Blunt thing !” he snapped and flung it from his hand, 
And lowering crept away and left the field, 





46 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





Then came the king’s son, wounded, sore bestead 
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword, 
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand, 

And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout 
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down, 

And saved a great cause that heroic day. 


But Roosevelt made it more epigrammatic when he 
said: “ Life’s a game. Don’t flinch, don’t foul, and HIT 
THAT LINE HARD! Play up, play up, and play the 
game.” 


VI 
AN ADVENTURE IN FRIENDLINESS 


A BLIND beggar sat by the side of a busy thoroughfare. 
Careless crowds were passing. He played a battered 
fiddle with a poor, bedraggled bow. No one stopped to 
listen. A thin man with a shock of gray hair looked 
down on the pitiful beggar. Then he reached over and 
gently lifted the decrepit violin, plucked its strings into 
tune with the grace of slender, artistic fingers, and tuck- 
ing it under his chin brought forth from its ancient frame 
melodies with the sweep of heaven in them. The crowds 
stopped to listen, the beggar’s torn hat was filled with 
coins, men muttered under their breath, “ It is Paganini! ” 
It was Paganini indeed. The great master musician had 
made his genius felt on the strings of a beggar’s violin. 
There are violinists great enough to transcend the limi- 
tations of a poor, misused fiddle. There are pictures 
which reach out and attract by their beauty, though 
framed in tawdry monstrosities and hung in a brutal 
light ; there are women whose loveliness cannot be hidden 
though they dress in rags; there are church services which 
touch the heart though they be held in plain, barnlike 
halls, bare of the ornamentation of stained-glass lights 
and upreaching arches; there are hymns whose words 
make them beloved despite poor melodies; there are 
poems whose innate beauty survives an obvious mis- 
translation, 
47 


48 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





Despite Disadvantages 


It is with such a passage that we have to deal now. If 
all the verses in the Bible were submitted to the suffrages 
of Christian people everywhere in English-speaking 
lands, the favorite verses, the best-known verses, the best- 
loved verses would be found in this chapter. Yet I can 
state quite frankly, as a student of Greek and a lover of 
English, I know of no passage which has suffered such 
mishandling in translation. It has survived in its glory, 
not because of, but despite, its English. And no greater 
witness to its true eloquence and beauty could be found 
than this fact—that obscured by verbal infelicities, con- 
fused by meaningless meanderings of misunderstood 
words, it has nevertheless retained its place as a favorite 
in English-speaking minds. 


The Central Word 


Its keyword in the Old Version was “ charity.” 
There may have been a time when this word, binding 
up within its scope all that is suggested by our lovely 
word “caring,” might fairly be used to denote Paul’s 
great Christian gift. But that time has long since 
gone. Charity, to us, means alms-giving, or a certain 
kindness in judgment. Surely it is much too narrow 
a word to use now. 

The revision attempts to broaden the translation 
by using “love.” But here we err in the opposite 
direction. ‘‘ Love” is much too broad. Involving, as 
it does, all that gamut of emotion, mother-love and 
child-love, sacred and profane love, it includes a hun- 
dred phases which Paul would not include, 


AN ADVENTURE IN FRIENDLINESS 49 





I can think of no English word which more closely 
approximates Paul’s word than that good, old-fashioned, 
glowing, meaningful word “ friendliness.” The ability 
to care for one another in the bonds of the church, the 
ability to be interested in each other’s good, the ability to 
know all about other people and love them just the same— 
this is the friendliness of which Paul writes. And under 
the spell of his words, church life becomes a glorious 
adventure in friendliness. 


The Friendliness of the Church 


There is a second obscurity which must be cleared up 
at the outset. The paragraph seems to open with a first 
person pronoun, “If I speak.” Does this indicate that 
Paul is submitting himself to the test of these words? 
Not at all. The sentence is a generalization. In ex- 
pressing the same meaning, the English should properly 
use, ‘If you speak,” signifying any one—man, woman, 
boy, girl, or church. And here the letter, addressed not 
to an individual, but to a church, clearly centers itself on 
the problem of church life. Wherever this general pro- 
noun ‘‘I” occurs in the text, then, we must substitute 
the implication that Paul is supposing a “ church.” 

“Tf the church speaks with the tongues of eloquent men 
and inspired angels ” it will sweep on to certain victory. 
I am substituting, deliberately, a modern mistranslation. 
Give us eloquence, is the cry of the modern church. Give 
us a man who has the gift of speech—let him hurl his 
message out over our city’s life, let him convince and 
convict men’ of sin, let him lure his fellow-Christians on 
by the magic’ of his words, and we shall not fear the 
result. Give us eloquence. 


eee a ee 


50 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





7 I yield to no man in my respect for eloquence. I love 

to listen while a great congregation hangs in mute expec- 
tation upon the slow unfolding of spoken words which 
clothe a thought. I love to watch while congregations 
quail under the whip-lashes of fury. I love to sense the 
lightning-flash of revelation illumining every last corner 
of this great auditorium. Indeed, perhaps I put too high 
a premium on the gift of speech. For I make bold to 
assert that no man should be encouraged to enter the 
preaching ministry of the church, be he ever so spiritual, 
ever so friendly, ever so earnest, ever so consecrated, 
unless he possesses the gift of speech. There are count- 
less other places for Christian service. But to place a 
man in a pulpit without the ability to clothe thought with 
effective garments of spoken words is as absurdly futile 
as to attempt to train a one-armed man in the technique 
of the violin. I go one step further. I insist that every 
young man who is a Christian and who by God’s grace 
is endowed with the gift of speech, has the burden of 
proof upon him to enter the ministry. The gift is the 
call. Do you believe in the insistent propaganda of 
Jesus? Have you that gift upon which he depends for 
its victory? Then, if you are unwilling to hurl yourself 
into the ranks of the ministry you have written upon 
your life the sign of a coward or a fool. Let no one 
mistake me. I know the wonder of the gift of speech. 


The Chill of Eloquence 


But I know, too, that without friendliness in the 
speaker, matched by friendliness in the church, all elo- 
quence is as meaningless as the ceaseless repetition of 


AN ADVENTURE IN FRIENDLINESS ol 


senseless noise. I have heard a score of men whose 
words were winged by the divine gift of eloquent fire, but 
whose echoes sounded only “noise, noise, noise ’—like 
the “zing, zing, zing-zing-zing’”’ of a brass triangle, or 
the “clash, clash, clash-clash-clash”’ of a resounding 
cymbal, says Paul; like the “ rat, tat, tat-tat-tat ’ of steam 
riveters, or the “ whang, whang, whang-whang-whang ” 
of a flat wheel on a street-car; like the most meaningless 
racket you can imagine is the eloquence of a preacher 
without friendliness, in a church without friendliness. 


What Can We Add? 


Let us add, then, a gift or two more. To eloquence 
let us join faith and knowledge. Let us back this 
preacher with a combination of aggressive fearlessness 
and prudent caution. Let us be progressive and at the 
same time wise in our business decisions. And to all this 
let us add as a concession to this insistent requirement of 
friendliness, gifts to the poor, and a fine gesture of self- 
abnegation when we die. “ Nothing, nothing!” says 
Paul, “absolutely nothing, without friendliness.” 


Identifying Friendliness 


How shall we know friendliness when we see it, 
Paul? First, let me tell you what it is not. It is not 
easily exhausted; it has a spirit that lasts through a 
long series of trials; it takes punishment and rebuke 
and neglect again and again, and comes back for more; 
it does not exhaust itself in a honeymoon flare of red 
fire and excitement; it gears itself to the long pull of 


52 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





the years, and it applies this enduring quality to its 
kindness. It comes back with a smile. 

It never shows jealousy at another’s success; it never 
cultivates the strut of pride; it never inflates itself like 
an ineffective, absurd pouter-pigeon; it does not take a 
delight in notoriety which it could achieve from outland- 
ish conduct; it does not exhaust itself searching for its 
own delight; it takes no satisfaction in a careful reckon- 
ing of another’s sins; it does not smile when a rival 
suffers downfall. When you see these things, you may 
be sure that friendliness is gone. 

But when vou see rejoicing in another’s record of fine 
achievement, as so often you see it sincere and honest 
on the fields of sport; when you see a willingness to pro- 
tect, with a roof of one’s own body, those who are exposed 
to punishment or ill; when you see a deliberate attempt 
to trust and believe, rather than doubt and discourage ; 
when you see patient endurance through trials—then be 
glad, for this is friendliness. 


The Timeless Virtue 


And it is one of the few things in the world which 
never grow old. It is as young today as in the dawn 
of time. The first true friend knew as much about it 
as you can know. The last friend in the infinity of 
time will know no more. It is perfect in itself. 

Knowledge is superseded by new knowledge. Each 
discovery must confess that it will be forced to yield 
to new discoveries tomorrow. I have been through 
such experience myself. I was a boy once and thought 
I knew some things. Now I ama man, I have learned 


AN ADVENTURE IN FRIENDLINESS 33 


new truths. And tomorrow I shall have learned yet 
others. 

Interpretation of God must move on with new light. 
I see some things about Him now, but I know my vision 
is dimmed as in a metal mirror which distorts the image. 
I shall go on seeing more clearly with each experience, 
confident that some day men will see Him with perfect 
clarity, face to face, and will know Him as we believe 
He now knows us. Meanwhile I shall be frank to say 
that prophecy is not permanent. 

But friendliness is timeless. It is international, and 
spans all generations. Learn its art. 


The Risks of Friendliness 


I am searching for a final picture of it. My mind goes 
back to a flag-clad coffin in a chapel where I once 
preached. The box encloses the body of a yellow-haired, 
blue-eyed Boy Scout. The gang had gone swimming. 
On their way home, swinging their dripping bathing-suits, 
they came to the railroad tracks near their homes. New 
concrete poles were inviting them to climb, and a shiny 
copper wire at the top, which they had never seen before, 
beckoned their adventurous spirits. One of the boys 
clambered up and reached out toward the gleaming 
festoon. The shock of bounding electric current stiffened 
his body and gripped him with the clutch of death. For 
the first time my boy realized it was alive wire. Without 
a moment’s hesitation he dropped his bathing-suit, scaled 
the pole, and when he had reached its height, flung him- 
self from its protection and clutched at the hanging body 
of his friend, as if to hurl it from the grip of that silent 


54 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





death. But the shock swept through him too, straight- 
ened his pathetic form into a stiff rod of paralysis, and 
held him there till they died, both of them, mute in their 
symbol of friendliness. 

Until Christian friendliness is like that, takes risks like 
that, cultivates service like that, let us read again and 
again these precious words of Paul, entering at last into 
the inner secrets of the great adventure—the adventure 
of friendliness. 


VII 
THE: STRATEGY. OF FOCH 


Tue Marne seems like a far-away dream. Von Hinden- 
burg is a ghost of a buried past. Chateau-Thierry and 
the Argonne are places in a forgotten history. The emo- 
tions of our great world crisis are almost gone. We can 
hardly believe that once we trembled on the very brink of 
a mad world of ruin. Only empty sleeves and broken 
men and a woman’s tear-stained cheeks still caught in the 
agony of an ever-new grief remind us now and then. 


The tumult and the shouting dies, 
The captains and the kings depart. 


And out of the mists of yesterday there rises the figure 
of the man who won the war. Beyond those petty dis- 
putes which begin in personal pride, he stands, alone, 
acknowledged by all those who really know. He is a 
blue-eyed, soft-spoken, simple-hearted, pious, retiring 
Frenchman, who wore the horizon-blue uniform of the 
French army, and who has written his name in letters of 
imperishable gold on the tablets of the world’s remem- 
brance—Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of France, and Gen- 
eralissimo of the Allied Armies. 


The World’s Hero 


When he came to America after the treaty, the re- 
porters hurried aboard his steamer eager for interviews. 


55 


i 


wen a 


56 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





He came to them quite simply, in ordinary military 
clothes, and waited for their inquiries. 

“ Where is your sword, Marshal?” asked a voice. A 
gemmed blade had been given him by his adoring country 
just before he sailed. He reached into his uniform 
pocket and found a little silver pencil which he exhibited. 
“This is my sword now,” he said quietly. So quickly had 
he left behind the pomp and circumstance (and the hate, 
too, dare we say it?) of the world’s great spasm of fury. 

His physician was questioned about his supplies of 
wine. The doctor replied: “ The marshal is not by habit 
a total abstainer. But he believes that he should be 
friendly enough to America to observe her laws while he 
is her guest. He will use no wines nor liquors while he 
is here.” God give us a few more Americans who are as 
decently respectful toward our country as this great 


~ Frenchman! 


A Question of Strategy 


But I am eager to introduce him to you as a master of 
strategy. It is this phase of his life which has most 
interested me. I have read his own books of military 
technique. I have followed his careful lectures to classes 
of army students. I have examined critical estimates of 
his work as teacher and executive. And I have made an 
illuminating discovery. 

Foch has not specialized in involved manceuvres or 
technical theories. He has discovered no new details of 
deploying, no complicated equations of ballistics. He 
has reached his world eminence through the revealing and 
practising of five simple principles of strategy which 
touch the great problem of handling men. 


THE STRATEGY OF FOCH o7 





Supreme Command 


His first insistence is “supreme command.” We in 
America have taken great credit for insisting upon unified 
organization of the Allied fronts. We cite that eloquent 
telegram which Pershing sent, offering the American 
forces to the discretion of a central staff. It may sur- 
prise us to know that years before the war, Foch as a 
teacher in the French military academy had insisted upon 
unified command as a fundamental of strategy. And he 
had held out for this theory against all opposition when 
he was forced into the actual circumstances of real war. 

He kept saying that it was no use to win in Italy if at 
the same time you are losing on the Russian front. It is 
folly to score an advance in Flanders if your line is break- 
ing in the Argonne. In a battle plan involving seven 
fronts, you are hopeless with seven separate staff groups. 
Somewhere at the center must sit the man who is author- 
ized to make the central decisions, who will take the 
responsibility for general results, who can send reserves 
to a tottering sector, or withdraw strength from an easy 
trench line. Modern war is impossible without supreme 
command. 


Train for Supreme Command 


Secondly, supreme command is impossible without 
specific training. You cannot expect, says Foch, that 
young military men will be sent through the ordinary 
course of promotions and responsibilities only to 
emerge from the process automatically equipped to be 
generalissimos. You must deliberately set for your- 
self the task of getting men ready for the mental and 


08 THE MIRACLE OF ME 


physical and spiritual strain of world-embracing conflict. 
You must cultivate the acumen, build up the bodies, and 
fortify the souls of the men who will some day bend 
themselves under the unbelievable stress of supreme | 
command. 


The Will to Win 


His third dictum is a surprising one from a military 
man. Generals have always been raised in the tradition 
the “ God is on the side of the greatest battalions.” Foch 
denies it. He says, “ Morale is more important than ma- 
terial.”’ A battle is not a mathematical computation in 
which a given number of men equipped with a given num- 
ber of guns can assuredly outfight a smaller number of 
men with a smaller number of guns. A battle is a drama, 
and the side that wins is the side which succeeds in main- 
taining the “ will to win.” Or as Clemenceau phrased it, 
“'The victorious army is the army which is fighting fifteen 
seconds after the enemy has quit!” 


Don’t Give Up! 


There is a naive simplicity about his fourth discovery, 
“You cannot lose a battle until you have stopped fight- 
ing.” It sounds obvious, but how many years we have 
spent learning that truth! There is only one way to lose 
a battle. That is—to quit. There are other ways to 
lose trenches, and towns, and men, and guns—but you 
can find no other way to lose a battle. No battle was 
ever lost except by giving up. 

You remember that historic incident which first brought 
Foch to the attention of the anxious world. He was in 


THE STRATEGY OF FOCH 59 





charge of an involved manceuvre which meant the with- 
drawal of some shattered British regiments from an ex- 
posed position. He had sent some French cavalry to hold 
the adjacent river-banks, while the English hurried out 
of the trap. The engagement had just begun. The 
French cavalry commander telephoned that he had been 
forced to retire from the river under overwhelming 
German onslaughts. Foch himself seized the telephone 
instrument. 

“How many men and guns have you remaining at your 
disposal? ”’ 

The cavalry commander reported the number still 
ready to fight. 

“Then,” said Foch, “ you will immediately retake both 
banks of the river. You will hold them until your last 
man and your last gun are out of action. When that 
has been accomplished, you will telephone me for further 
instructions! ” 

Foch was right. The cavalry retook both banks of the 
river. The withdrawal of the British was properly 
covered. And the day was turned into a triumph. For 
a battle is never lost until you have given up. 


Attack! 


His fifth and last rule is this: “ When being pushed 
back, attack!” It has been amply proved in sport. 
When the game is going against you, the time has come 
for aggressive tactics. When the score of your oppo- 
nents is mounting high and their cheers are confident, 
when the end of the game looms just ahead and your 
chances for victory are glimmering, then signal for for- 
ward passes, and daring punts and open field play. That 


60 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





is no time for caution. Foch militarized this principle. 
When the battle is almost lost, summon a bugler who 
knows the “ Charge!” 

There is one despatch which has deserved immortality, 
though it was composed in the hurry of battle. Foch was 
in command of a division during the terrible retreat 
which marked the first German thrust on Paris. Joffre 
was commander-in-chief of the French forces, manipulat- 
ing his troops from general headquarters. Out of the 
wrack of battle came this message from his subordinate: 
“To Joffre: My right is broken, my left is shattered, 
my center is in retreat. The situation is excellent. I 
shall attack. Foch.” 

Did a thrill of joy run through Joffre’s soul as he read 
those splendid words? The thrill is ours today. And 
we know that Foch was right in his final insistence. 
When being pushed back, attack. 


The Battle of Life 


But all this is so purely military and technical. 
Why should we be worried with the details of 
strategy? The war is over. Let us forget it. We 
shall not need the tactics of armies. This is peace. 
Let us enjoy it. 

You are wrong. What Foch found out about war is 
absolutely correct strategy for life. There is a text 
that tells the story: “He that ruleth his spirit is 
greater than he that taketh a city.” The strategist 
who controls the battle of his own life is the real 
generalissimo. The technique of living is more im- 
portant than the tactics of war. And the principles 
are strangely interchangeable. 


THE STRATEGY OF FOCH 61 





Take the five cardinal principles of Foch. Is “supreme 
command ” a problem for life? I am convinced that no 
man lives in the hurry of these complex days without 
fighting his battle over an area of experience which 
covers at least seven fronts. With lust and discour- 
agement, selfishness and doubt, enemies and errors 
on every side, that man is doomed to sure defeat who 
does not order all his forces from within the citadel of 
control. Do you command life, or does life command 
you? Do you send reenforcements to places of crisis? 
Do you withdraw reserves from easy sectors? Are you 
in command? Benjamin Franklin said it in an unfor- 
gettable sentence: “ Steer life; let not life steer you!” 


Self-control 


But do not expect that sense of supreme command 
without deliberate training for it. We teach people 
everything else, but we have not yet worked out a cur- 
riculum for central control. We have courses for doc- 
tors and dressmakers, machinists and manicures, law- 
yers and lapidaries, but we spend little time on 
supreme command. Yet we know that we cannot ex- 
pect to send men up through the grades of ordinary 
life and automatically produce generalissimos. 

They electrocuted a gifted young fellow in Sing Sing 
last year. He gave a fictitious name, and refused to tell 
where he had been educated. But it was evident that 
some college had placed its stamp upon him. He knew 
philosophy and psychology, talked glibly about history 
and economics, quoted poetry and classic prose. He was 
genial and pleasant—an excellent example of culture. 


as ed Soe 


62 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





But he had acquired the annoying habit of holding up 
bank cashiers at the point of a revolver, and demanding 
their money. Occasionally when they objected, he felt it 
necessary to shoot them down in cold blood. As they 
were strapping his hand into the electric-chair, for the 
execution, he took a last puff of a cigaret, and said, non- 
chalantly: “Go ahead. I'll try anything once.” 

There is a fine bravado about that which intrigues 
us, yet we sense the sordid failure of that life. He 
had been accustomed to trying anything once. Flit- 
ting from chance to chance, he had tried one thing 
once too often. Utterly uncontrolled by a dominating 
purpose, he had wandered, wasting his gifts. He had 
been trained in a score of classrooms, but no one had 
paused to teach him how to control, how to command, 
how to direct the intricate strategy of life. Schools 
and colleges and churches must realize that supreme 
command is not a by-product of the educational process, 
but is rather the one great aim, with trade-skill, cultural 
backgrounds and professional technique as incidentals. 
We must have a new generation of generalissimos, who 
will be ready for unified command of obedient, directed 
forces. 


Morale in Peace 


Is morale more important than material in life? Does 
Foch’s dictum hold for our battles? Is the “ will to win ” 
more important than a million dollars? Does a college 
education count for more than determined pluck? Is a 
good name and a flying start worth more than that deter- 
mination which fights fifteen seconds after the opponents 
have all quit? 


THE STRATEGY OF FOCH 63 


A lad was tramping along the tow-path which skirted 
a New York State canal years ago. Plainly dressed, he 
carried over his shoulder a little bundle wrapped in a blue 
bandanna handkerchief, and he whistled a tune as he 
swung along. He came to a place where a canal-boat 
was tied up to a docking wharf, and as he passed, a genial 
old canal-boat captain hailed the whistling boy. 

“ Where are you going, son?” 

“T’m off to New York, sir.” 

“ What are you planning to do there? ”’ 

“T am not at all sure, sir. JI want to make my way 
ih lecans: 

“ What’s in the bundle you are carrying?”’ 

“ Just some clothes and a little lunch.” 

“Anything else?” 

“Yes, sir. One thing. A recipe for making soap.” 

“Well, New York surely needs soap. Son, some day 
some boy is going to be the greatest soap-maker in the 
world; for the life of me I can’t tell why you can’t be that 
boy. Sell an honest pound of quality for every pound 
you sell, give one-tenth of all you earn to the Lord, and 
we'll hear proud things of you yet!” 

“ Good-by, sir.” 

“‘Good-by, son.” 

And the boy went on. But he knew what he was 
planning to do, now. He was planning to be the greatest 
soap-maker in the world. A dream had filled his life. 
The little blue bundle was the same, the coarse clothes 
were the same, the recipe was the same. But morale had 
entered in. And the world stood aside to let go by a 
boy who knew exactly where he was going and was 
determined to get there. 


64 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





His name was William Colgate. His firm still leads 
the world. And a part of that consecrated tenth built 
Colgate University, whose ten thousand loyal sons have 
carried his name to every corner of the world. 


One Way to Lose 


Does life prove that battles are lost only when we stop 
fighting? Can circumstances, enemy reenforcements, 
mistakes of judgment, beat back the best of courage? Or 
is Foch right? Is surrender literally the only way to 
defeat? 

Read again that matchlessly moving story of Helen 
Keller, beaten by forces beyond her control, at the very 
start of life. Blind, deaf, and dumb, without memory of 
sight or sound or speech, she seemed doomed to live her 
life behind impenetrable barriers of disaster. But she 
would not give up. And her teacher would not give up. 
Through weary years they toiled together. Helen learned 
to touch lips gently and sense their spoken message. 
Helen learned to send her finger-tips over long lines of 
raised print while she read the Braille sentences. Helen 
learned to write by finding the keys of a typewriter. 
Helen learned to speak by forming those stubborn little 
lips of hers into imitations of what she felt when others 
were speaking into her waiting fingers. She took a 
college course, wrote lovely stories, achieved beautiful 
charities, and today she is as winsome a figure of spiritual 
glory as has blessed our generation, an eternal rebuke 
to the whining men and women who lose battles by giving 
up too soon. There is but one way to defeat—spiritual 
surrender. There are no other ways, 


THE STRATEGY OF FOCH 69 





Forward! 


Finally, what can we say about the last demand of our 
warrior? Shall we adopt for life his startling battle-cry, 
“When being pushed back, attack ’’? 

There is a magic quality of appeal about Roosevelt in 
any one of a thousand guises. But I like best to recall 
him as a little white-faced, slender-armed, narrow- 
chested boy, wearing heavy-lensed spectacles, standing in 
the parlor of his New York City home, while his father 
says: 

“ Theodore, I think I have given you a brain. But if 
you ever have a body, I am afraid you will have to make 
it for yourself. I have fitted up a gymnasium in the 
attic-room ready for your use. You may start today, if 
you will.” 

I like to watch that little boy, shaken with a fearful 
hacking cough, climb up the stairs, away from the shout- 
ing boys on the street, away from the books he loved to 
read, up to the sober, nerve-straining discipline of Indian 
clubs and dumb-bells—until one day he found that all 
those hard hours of labor had made for him a body, 
bronzed and sturdy, deep-chested and manly, with eyes 
that tirelessly read hundreds of books, and arms that 
reached out in challenging lure over his dear America, 
and a voice that went resounding over every State as he 
fought for the things he loved. 


The Message of the Generalissimo 


Foch is gloriously right. Is there a place in your 
life where things are going hard? No retreat there. 
Advance! This is the psychology of battle. 


66 





THE MIRACLE OF ME 


What shall we do who carry the fray 

For civilization on today? 

The war of the angels for goodly right 
Against the power of brutish might? 

When courage and patience are wearing thin 
And endurance is almost driven in 

And our angels stand in the waiting hush— 
“Remember the Marne, and Ferdinand Foch!” 


VIII 
CHRISTIAN CRAFTSMANSHIP 


Stupy. The very first word halts us. This sounds like 
some hermit, some armchair philosopher, or some young 
and callow professor. We are ready to begin by dis- 
counting the advice. 

But think for a moment. This is not the cool, sophis- 
ticated insistence of a scholar, or the careless remark of 
an immature pedant. This word was written by an old 
man, one of the greatest old men in the history of the 
world. He has lived a life as active and as far-sweeping 
as ever wrote its record on the pages of remembrance. 
The urge of his belief has sent him thousands of tedious 
miles over Roman roads, on storm-tossed ships, as a con- 
quering hero, and as a slave in galling manacles. He has 
seen men of high and low estate. He has run the gamut 
of emotion in his faith. The superb heights of clear 
assurance under the blessed sunlight of God, the bitter 
struggles of that stupendous wrestling by which he kept 
his refractory body under control, and the night-dark 
terror of those unanswered prayers when he asked, and 
asked and asked again, that the goading thorn be plucked 
from him—these experiences have left their mark upon 
his face and his soul. And he is writing now a letter of 
final counsel to a young man whom he loves as his son. 
Timothy, lover of Jesus, clean-limbed and boy-hearted, is 
waiting for the last advice from Paul, battle-scarred 

67 


68 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





warrior, world-traveler, the good soldier of Jesus. And 
the first word in this sentence of solemn fervor is Study. 

We study everything else. The physician pores over 
his monthly journals and his huge volumes; the lawyer 
spends time immersed in a flood of new decisions and old 
precedents; the business man reads Babson, and Dow, 
and the Federal Reserve Bulletin, with special attention 
reserved for the trade mediums of his enterprise; house- 
wives turn the pages of the cook-book, and Good House- 
keeping. Even the telephone book receives more careful 
conning and respectful attention than do the things of 
our religion. 

And we do everything else with our religion but study 
it. We boast that we feel it, something in us is seized 
by the sense of it, and we surrender to it. Some of us 
claim to enjoy it, really to delight in the glow of it. We 
are willing to admit, if pressed, that most of the time we 
try to live it, to act it, to incorporate it. But all this will 
not satisfy Paul. He is unwilling to lift his hand of 
guidance from the shoulder of Timothy until he has 
looked him fair in the eyes and has said with all the 
solemnity of a farewell, “ Study, study, study.” 


Our Bible Illiterates 


The word comes with a shock of surprise to our 
minds. Yet how much we need its sober counsel. 
Ask any modern congregation to look up the nineteenth 
chapter of Hezekiah, and nine out of ten people present 
will begin to leaf over the pages of the Bible in search 
of a book which of course they can never find, and which 
they would never have expected to find if they had the 


CHRISTIAN CRAFTSMANSHIP 69 





slightest working knowledge of the Book. Submit the 
younger generation to a test on Bible information. You 
will be amazed at the vast chasms of abysmal ignorance 
which are revealed. Obviously it is necessary in such 
tests to allow for those eccentricities of mind which cause 
students to write down the most absurd thing which 
occurs to them in answer toa simple question. But when 
due allowance has been made for “ spoofing” and jokes, 
we are still compelled to admit that there are few traces 
of real Bible study on the young mind of today. The 
saddest symptom of this desperate condition is apparent 
to any one who watches hordes of Christians go shifting 
about from fad to fad, like clouds of sand blown by a 
desert wind from hillock to hillock. From Christian 
Science to New Thought, and from New Thought to 
Applied Psychology, and from Applied Psychology— 
whither? Oh, can we not take Paul’s word and build 
beneath our lives a firm foundation of study, enough to 
be steady under the assaults of wind, enough to be able 
always to give a reason for the faith that is in us? Let 
us hear the reproving demand echo in our ears—Study, 
study, study. 


The Aim of Study 


To SHow TuyseLtr Approved. Here at last we begin 
to feel perfectly at home. ‘This is our idea, exactly. 
These words come directly from our vocabulary. When 
we study, this is precisely our motive. We study to show 
ourselves approved. We study to pass the test. 

A period of long and indolent carelessness is menaced 
by the approach of an examination. We realize our un- 
preparedness. Regret assails us. We begin a feverish 


70 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





campaign of cramming. We sit up late into the night. 
We drink great beakers of steaming coffee and bind our 
aching heads with wet bandages. Blear-eyed, we stumble 
into the examination room. Our minds are ingeniously 
clear. We view the questions. We answer as skilfully 
as we can. With a great show of eagerness we fling 
ourselves upon the questions which we recognize as being 
within our ken. With a huge flourish of meaningless 
words we attempt to hide our ignorance of the other 
things we ought to know. And after a totally unsatisfac- 
tory hour or two of bluffing and stalling, we emerge, 
hoping to “get through,” and sighing, “There, that’s 
over!’? And we mean it quite literally. We have been 
studying to show ourselves approved. 


God’s Test 


Unto Gop. Like the tolling of a great bell sounds this 
death-knell to the mean pretensions of our petty souls. 
This test is no game with a more or less obtuse instructor. 
There is no inviting opportunity to win in a contest of 
wits. God is the great examiner, and to him all subter- 
fuges are vain, all wordy paragraphs of excuse are futile. 
We must submit our life unto God. 


The Joy of the Craftsman 


A WorKMAN THAT NEEDETH NoT TO BE ASHAMED, 
Apparently this test before God is not intended to be an 
end in itself. We are not to consider the examining as 
an incidental barrier over which we leap into areas of 
forgetfulness and freedom. All this study is but an 


CHRISTIAN CRAFTSMANSHIP > 71 





apprenticeship for a profession which will utilize every 
item of our technique. We are laborers, committed by 
consecration to a skilled task. This study is to be the 
training for the creative life of Christianity on beyond. 

And into the actual practise of our profession we are 
to bring that uniquely beautiful joy, the joy of Christian 
craftsmanship. Leaving the theoretical pedantry of our 
studies, we may now begin the exquisite experience of 
making beautiful things with our faith. 

It is a joy which has lost its meaning to thousands of 
modern hearts. ‘There was a time when each craftsman 
personally saw his product through to completion. He 
used his skill upon each separate process involved, and 
when his handiwork was completed he could handle it, 
examine it, admire it, and feel a thrill of pride init. But 
today few men sense this glory. A score of whirring 
machines contribute infinitesimal elements toward the 
completion of a single simple part. Each man attends 
to the absurdly monotonous repetition of one concealed 
creative act. All day long he does this one thing, over 
and over again, never seeing the finished results of his 
labor, flanked on every side by men who are doing to the 
same product other monotonous and regular things. 
Whether or not the skill and pride of a craftsman can 
survive the hurly-burly of modern machine-civilization 
may be a question for the future. It is sufficient here to 
say that in most workmen the sense of craft-pride is 
absolutely gone. 

There was a shoemaker in one of Galsworthy’s stories 
who refused to cheapen his product in order to meet com- 
petition. In an age of shoddy chicanery, he persisted in 
buying the best leather, the finest findings, and expending 


72 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





upon them the enthusiastic skill of a trained craftsman. 
He starved to death, of course, and his last customer 
entered the shoe-shop one morning to find the wan form 
bent over a pair of beautifully made, unsellable shoes. 
Perhaps the spirit of the guild-creator had to die so 
tragically. Surely there is no way of feeling like that 
about a pair of shoes, when all you do is to make one 
cut over and over again in successive pieces of leather 
which other men selected and prepared, and which other 
men still will sew, and fit, and finish, and sell. 


Craft-pride 


Yet life perishes without the stimulation of some such 
pride. Perhaps we shall be driven to seek it in our re- 
ligious life. Perhaps Christianity offers the field in which 
alone we may sense the strange joy of workmen un- 
ashamed, undismayed by the threat of inspection, con- 
fident in the quality of our work. 

When Booker T. Washington, as a boy, walked the 
weary miles to a school which he thought might take him 
in, he was greeted at the entrance with the discouraging 
information that there was no room for him. Something 
of the tragedy of his disappointment must have been 
apparent, forthe woman, who greeted him with refusal, 
paused and asked him to’clean and dust the room in which 
they stood, while she went out to attend an appointment. 
When she came back, she took from her sleeve a little 
lacy handkerchief, freshly-laundered, and went over some 
of the obscure corners of the room searching for dust. 
The little kerchief was fresh and spotless as before. 
Then she turned to the young Negro boy and said quietly, 


CHRISTIAN CRAFTSMANSHIP 73 


like you!” And he began his blessed journey on the 


“We can always find room somewhere for one more ra 


shining high-road of world service. 

What was passing through his wistful mind, as he 
watched that lacy handkerchief explore his task! What 
gleam of satisfaction shone in his big eyes as he knew 
she would find no dust! This is the joy of a task well 
done—the satisfaction of a workman that needeth not to 
be ashamed. 


At Sea 


RicuHtLy DivipInc THE WorpD or TrutTH. The trans- 
lation through the verse has been crystal-clear until we 
reach this concluding clause. But the English words 
puzzle us here. “Rightly dividing” brings no clear, 
meaningful picture to our minds. ‘‘ When in doubt, turn 
to the original,’ is good counsel for all readers of the 
Bible and especially for those who have taken upon them- 
selves the duties of Bible study. A glance at the Greek 
back of this stubborn English expression is immediately 
illuminating. The word here translated “ dividing” is a 
very general and broad Greek verb which is used to 
denote all cutting, separating, parting operations. The 
lopping off of the limb of a tree in pruning; the splitting 
of a great log with a wedge; the scissoring of pieces of 
cloth; the plowing up of a furrow; the incisions of a 
surgeon working in human flesh—all these acts are 
covered by the general word “ divide.” In any particular 
case, the precise meaning must be decided by what pre- 
cedes and what follows in the sentence, by the context, 
by the discovery of what is “‘ divided.” 

In this particular sentence, the word “ divide ” is linked 


Sees 


TA THE MIRACLE OF ME 





by compounding with the adverb “rightly,” so that the 
two words in English are actually only one word in Greek. 
This compound word, “rightly dividing,” is used in 
classic and New Testament Greek as well, to mean one 
thing only—“to steer a straight course,” “to navigate 
well,” “to cut the waves skilfully and wisely,” always 
against a background of sea-faring. And here it unques- 
tionably means, “ Commanding with skill the ship of your 
life, by means of the word of truth.” With one of those 
quick turns in figure of speech, Paul has transferred our 
minds from Christian craftsmanship (skill in the trade 
of the Christian) to Christian craftsmanship (skill in the 
ships of the Christian). And we are thinking of life in 
terms of a voyage. : 


Out of Experience 


Out of what hidden chapter of his experience did Paul 
drag forth this figure of speech for this use? Do we not 
remember? Only a few months before, a prisoner under 
guard, watched by Roman soldiers, he had stood upon the 
deck of a rearing, balking ship, while a howling wind 
wrenched her timbers and drove her scudding toward the 
rocky shore. The sailors, like cowardly rats, had tried 
to escape by dropping a little boat over the stern and 
making off in it. Fear was rampant. Paul took com- 
mand. The ship became a living organism of articulate 
effort. Plan took the place of panic. Dawn came up to 
keep courage high. The storm quieted. They knelt on 
the deck and gave thanks. The scene rises before him 
like a dream as he writes this deathless sentence, “ steer- 
ing with skill in the word of truth.” 


CHRISTIAN CRAFTSMANSHIP 75 





And before my mind another picture rises. We are on 
board a great gray battle-ship. Dawn is coming over the 
shore hills of France. Ten days ago we sailed away from 
our own dear land, on perilous duty bound. Our captain 
had sealed orders. He was to take charge of twelve 
ereat troop-ships, guard them safely through all circum- 
stances, and bring them on a certain morning, at a certain 
time, to a certain spot off the coast of France, there to 
be met by a flotilla of American destroyers ready to pilot 
our troop-ships into their assigned harbor-berths. And 
now it is the fated morning and the appointed time. We 
have fought our way through storm and stress; engine 
troubles have vexed us, balky ships have delayed us, 
clouded skies have bewildered us, torpedoes have as- 
saulted us, submarines have thrust out their slimy fangs 
at us like snakes in a pool. Is this the right spot in this 
waste of wild waters? Are we on time? Will our ally 
ships meet us here? 


The Welcome “ Well Done” 


Far over on the horizon a lookout catches a gleam 
of flashing light, coming up out of the dawn. There 
is a smudge of smoke hull-down on the rim of the world. 
From every corner of the East, little vessels like swarm- 
ing insects come closing in at fierce speed. Our friends 
have come to take over our ships. They are signalling a 
silent welcome. We spell out the light-flashed words, 
“On time O. K.,” they are saying. The long vigils are 
forgotten, the strain of the responsibility slips off like a 
garment; we bound off toward home, engines throbbing 
and pounding with released speed. And as we pass the 


76 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





France-bound troop-ships, we cheer like mad schoolboys 
to the khaki-clad hosts of our comrades in arms. And 
they cheer back. We have brought them over safely, 
and on time. It took all our skill, all our patience, all 
our courage, all our ingenuity, but here they are, safe 
and on time. 

Steer a wise course, Christian, through the seas of 
life. The storms are fierce, enemies lurk in hiding, dis- 
couragements are many. But use all the skill you have, 
study what truth you can find, chart your position often, 
and steer a wise course. 


IX 
DENOMINATIONAL DISARMAMENT 


I am about to issue a call to an interdenominational con- 
ference on disarmament. The place and time of meeting 
will be announced later. I am now hard at work on the 
preliminary plans. 

I have it in mind to introduce the conference idea with 
a great armistice celebration at the burial of two unknown 
heroes. One of my martyrs was an overworked mis- 
sionary in a huge field of swarming pagans. He had 
five hundred thousand people in his parish. He had 
literally hundreds of sick patients seeking him every 
week. He had a little wooden outhouse for an office. 
He used a tiny corrugated-iron hut for a hospital. As 
he watched the young life and the old life which invaded 
the privacy of his waking and sleeping hours, he often 
thought of that sentence from Darwin, the scientist, “ You 
might just as well try to convert cattle.” Yet when this 
judgment sounded most dully and somberly in his mind, 
he was refreshed to hear the melodies of Christian hymns 
float out over the compound from little meetings of happy 
Christian natives, and in his times of deep despair, he 
could look upon them joyously sharing the symbols of 
Christian communion. We ordered him back home occa- 
sionally and made an exhibit of him, sending him from 
church to church, with orders to drum up contributions 


so his work might not be abandoned. So he had a chance 
vite 


78 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





to live for a little while in our best homes, eat fine food, 
sleep in soft beds, look upon splendid clothes. It did not 
seem to spoil him, nor discourage him from his work. 
He wanted to go back to his miniature hospital. But of 
course, this furlough plan did not exactly rest him. And 
when he did take up his work again, he found that he 
could not say “ No” to the needs around him. He could 
not sleep when untended people were writhing in pain all 
around him. The sense of his half-million benighted, 
anguish-wracked, terror-stricken neighbors oppressed 
him. He performed operations when he should have 
been resting. » He journeyed through terrible trails when 
he should have been reading quietly. He grew haggard 
and nervous. His eyes shone with a haunted brightness. 
He had a way of murmuring to himself as he walked 
about and worked, and the burden of his murmur was a 
rather pitiful repetition, “O Jesus!” They say he man- 
aged to whisper it hoarsely just before he died. 

We need not name him. Let him be an unknown hero. 
Let us bury him with pomp and ceremony. 


Another Hero 


My second nameless martyr was an undersupported 
minister in a tiny village church. There were only a 
thousand people within reach of his church. There were 
six separate churches in his village to care for them. He 
had a bare board box of a church building, and around 
him rallied thirty or forty faithful folk. His salary was 
pitifully small. The parsonage was cold and meager. 
His family was undernourished and poorly clad. Of 
course, he had no money for books and magazines. 


DENOMINATIONAL DISARMAMENT 79 





Preaching without the slightest contact with outside 
thought was a terrible drain. Nothing much could be 
done. What really hurt was the limitation on the chil- 
dren he loved. And he had given his life to the cause 
of Jesus with such joy and hope only a few years ago. 
The terrible cruel impenetrability of his barriers broke 
his heart and killed him. His last thought was for his 
wife and their tiny sons, condemned to pitiful penury. 

Let him be nameless. We shall bury his body with 
pomp and solemnity. He gave his life for us. Honor 
him then with bared heads. 

And when the two martyrs have been entombed, shall 
we not bow our heads in shame to pray for forgiveness? 
We have consented to their death. We have erected and 
maintained the system which crushed out these lives. We 
have built this structure of denominational armament 
which killed these men and countless others whom they 
represent. God forgive us! 


The Conference Opens 


I am planning to invite to the conference which fol- 
lows, representatives of all the Protestant denomina- 
tions. We shall open the session with a repetition of 
Christ’s prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. Perhaps 
some shattered missionary who is back for a bit of a 
rest after the taunts of heathenism, would be willing 
to lead us in this devotional period. I want to have 
the key-note speech made by Doctor S. Earl Taylor. 
You remember him, of course. After his stupendous 
achievement as leader of the Methodist Centenary 
Movement, he suggested that a united Christendom, 


80 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





moving forward in an Interchurch World Movement, 
might shake the battlements of sin into dust and ruins. 
But we failed his dream, and he is an invalid now on 
a Western ranch, striving for courage and confidence 
again. I think we might prevail on him to repeat that 
great address of his in which he said, “The great 
problem of the Protestant Churches is not so much 
to get together as it is to keep apart—at least a half-a- 
mile apart! ’’ He knows, for he has bruised his life against 
our selfishness. 


Some Pertinent Facts 


My own proposal which I should like to broach to the 
conference is a rather simple one. I think I should 
preface it by marshaling some pertinent facts about our 
present situation in armament. Take the disgrace of our 
overchurched communities. There are New England 
villages of one hundred and fifty inhabitants with six 
churches. There are Pennsylvania towns with six’ go- 
ing Protestant communions to four hundred and fifty 
total population. There is a township in the East with 
one thousand people and eighteen churches. Alaska has 
fifty thousand people, about evenly divided between 
whites and natives. There are one hundred and seventy- 
one missionaries working among the Alaskans, and they 
represent the following competing churches: Presby- 
terians, Methodists, Disciples, Baptists, Friends, Swedish 
Evangelical, Lutheran, Moravian, Episcopalian, Congre- 
gational, Greek Catholic, and Roman Catholic. A single 
tiny sect has in recent years suffered secessions which 
have resulted in (1) The Church of God, (2) The True 


DENOMINATIONAL DISARMAMENT $1 


Church of God, (3) The Only True Church of God. Of 
the nine thousand eight hundred Presbyterian churches, 
over five thousand have less than one hundred members. 
Have you ever worshiped or preached in a church with 
less than one hundred members? I have. No impact on 
the community, no thrill in the services, no decent wage 
for the minister. Indeed my own best piece of church 
work was the preparation of one such tiny church for the 
act of self-abnegation involved in joining with a larger 
church of the same denomination within easy walking 
distance. “The needless multiplication of churches 
means half-filled pews, half-hearted enthusiasm, a gen- 
erally dreary and depressing atmosphere, in which it is 
difficult to cultivate an eager spirituality; it means divi- 
sion of forces, impaired prestige, diminished power to 
fight for right against wrong!” This is the studied judg- 
ment of a Christian statesman. 

Meanwhile there is a kindred disgrace in underchurch- 
ing. Compare the New England statistics with the situa- 
tion in Colorado, where there are one hundred and 
thirty-three villages without a Protestant church, and one 
hundred villages with no church at all. Glance at South 
America, until within the last few months an almost 
utterly neglected continent of pagan darkness. 


New Sins of Armament 


The most recent crimes of denominational armament 
are obvious to any one who will glance at our mad com- 
petition which is now spending itself in a craze for de- 
nominational cathedrals at Washington. Practically 
every church body is feverishly spending hundreds of 


82 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





thousands of dollars without regard to neighborhood 
needs or decent cooperation, all anxious to make sure that 
no denomination outdoes them in a splendid towering 
building which will “represent”? them on the broad 
streets of our national capital. There never was a race 
in “ dread-naught ” building so utterly indefensible. And 
we are now madly attempting to get denominational foot- 
holds in Continental Europe, watching each other like 
jealous vultures, shouting sectarian slogans with no 
slightest heed to ordered allocations or cooperative assault 
on acommon enemy. No wonder Rome laughs. No won- 
der Jesus’ cause is a travesty upon brotherly cooperation. 

With the facts all presented, I should demand an 
answer to this question. Churches of Jesus, in God’s 
name, against whom are you arming? Surely not against 
your brethren. Rather against the devil and all his 
angels, against spiritual wickedness in high and low 
places. Then plan your armament against your real 
enemy. Waste no time nor effort in gestures of mean 
jealousy at the other regiments in your division. There 
must be no sectarian spite. There must be no proud hid- 
ing of failure. There must be no more thoughtless, fruit- 
less showy competition—no entrance upon a race for 
separate prestige. But instead a definite attempt to know 
one another, our histories, our achievements, our mis- 
takes, our leaders, our hopes. There must be declared an 
immediate naval holiday on all inner quarrelings. Down 
with all church jingoes, all the war parties, all ecclesiastical 
Prussians, though they mask themselves in the eager 
visage of a denominational secretary, or in the benevolent 
smile of a rich man who has ambitions to be a little 
Kaiser. 


DENOMINATIONAL DISARMAMENT 83 





Together for Victory 


Then on, in a combined assault upon our common foes. 
The unchurched millions of our country, the tragic blight 
of rotting heathenism, the rampant disrespect for law 
which threatens our dear republic—are not these chal- 
lenges stirring enough? 

Add then this terrific responsibility. General Tasker 
Bliss has said, “ If there is another world war, the Chris- 
tian Church will be responsible for it!” Can it be? O, 
can it be? To our knees in beseeching prayer. 

But halt! No man can pray for love between nations 
until he has prayed for love between churches. No man 
can hope for international brotherhood while Christian 
sects slay each other with hateful campaigns of assault. 
No man can demand a world of ordered peace, while 
churches arm with silent fury to do battle with other 
churches. The prayer would be crushed in a sky of 
brass. 

Christian brothers, let us disarm! 


Xx 
LESSONS FROM MY FORD 


Henry Forp’s director of social work was addressing a 
great audience in a city auditorium. He began by asking, 
‘Ts there any one in the room who has never seen a 
Ford?” There were several moments of contemplative 
silence, and no show of hands at all. Then he said 
quietly: “I am rather sorry. Mr. Ford authorized me 
to say tonight that if I found any one in my audience who 
had never seen a Ford, I could offer to supply one to 
that person free of charge.’ That was at least one Ford 
joke which was not on the Ford. 


Sermons in Stones 


I am to bring to your attention tonight five simple, yet 
fundamental, lessons which I have learned from my Ford. 
If it seems a bit absurd to you that the Ford should 
stand as a text-book in philosophy, I have only to say 
that a man is no student at all if he demands that all his 
lessons come from professors or careful paragraphs in 
technical tomes. That king was touching on a profound 
truth when he summoned some tutors for his young sons 
and started them at their teaching work with the brief 
injunction, “ You are to make yourself unnecessary as 
soon as possible.” The real art of the teacher is to make 
himself unnecessary as soon as possible. The only justi- 


fication of a text-book is that it prepares you to learn 
84 


LESSONS FROM MY FORD 85 


lessons outside of its pages and without its aid. A college 
course is a crippling thing unless it makes you able to 
learn profound truths from the commonplace life which 
surrounds you. And preachers have failed miserably 
unless they have made you hungry to make your own ser- 
mons out of the material of your living. “ Sermons in 
stones, books in the running brooks, and good in every- 
thing,’ wrote Shakespeare. Surely I can find at least 
five lessons in a marvel like a Ford. And I quote the 
best of Scriptural authority for my attempt, for Jesus 
made his truths real in the stories of every-day life; seeds, 
nets, lamps, coins, trees, servants, leaven—all gave him 
insights into the lessons which his fellow men had to learn 
at his teaching. These are the five warnings which my 
Ford gives me for life. 


The Gas Supply 


First, watch your gasoline! To the naked eye, there 
is no apparent difference between a Ford with gas, and a 
Ford without. Indeed, as the gas approaches the danger- 
line in the tank, the car goes puffing along just as if 
everything were all right. Perhaps a little rise in the 
road, or a sudden turn of the wheels, and you hear an 
ominous fit of futile coughing in the otherwise normal 
motor. Then she slows up and stops, and the most 
frantic efforts with the gas and the spark levers fail to 
bring results. You look around you. To your dismay 
you discover that you are miles away from gasoline. For 
thus it seems to happen. The place where your supply 
runs out is usually the place where you need gas most. 
We are living in the midst of a hurried civilization where 
men and women need to be told to watch their gas. Gas 


86 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





is energy. And you must keep your energy tank well 
filled. You may look perfectly normal, you may be per- 
forming with fine skill your appointed task. And yet 
your gas supply may be so low that a little extra rise in 
the road or a little extra load, and to your great surprise 
you stop running and cannot go on. And you usually 
find that the place where you run out of energy on the 
road of life is exactly the place where you need it most. 
Blue rings form around your eyes, your hands begin to 
tremble at their work, you do not sleep and do not eat as 
you should. The warnings are clear. You are running 
out of gas. ‘Slow up, spend the necessary time and effort 
and money to get your tank refilled. Do not allow your- 
self to be stranded on the side of a lonely country road 
of inactivity. Watch your gas! 


Life’s Lubrication 


Second, watch your oil! If gasoline is the pep of life, 
then oil is politeness. And politeness is as necessary to 
life as oil is toa Ford. The whirring bearings, the plung- 
ing pistons, the creaking springs, all must have the fine 
lubricating influence of courtesy, or your motor will be- 
come a wreck. There is so much terrific motion in the 
mechanism of a car, that friction must be eliminated as 
far as is mechanically possible. And the friction problem 
of a Ford is simple when compared with the friction 
problem of a human life. Fortunately enough the people 
who need warning about gas, seldom need the warning 
about oil. It is the charging, energetic, indomitable, 
achieving people with plenty of energy on tap all the time 
who must be cautioned occasionally that life must be 
lubricated by consideration of others. And the success- 


LESSONS FROM MY FORD 87 





ful motor, as well as the successful life, is a skilful com- 
bination of just the right amount of pepperino with just 
the right amount of salve and oil. 


Keep Cool! 


Third, watch your radiator! For the radiator is that 
magnificent device which keeps a motor cool when things 
are getting too hot, and keeps a motor warm when the 
surroundings are too cold. In the summertime, the prob- 
lem is to keep everything open, to keep the fan buzzing 
merrily round, to keep the circulating water cool around 
the cylinders, and to avoid steaming over. In the winter- 
time the problem is to keep your radiator from freezing 
up and to maintain a reservoir of warmth around your 
cylinders. And the Ford is equipped to strike a happy 
balance in the midst of differing climatic and service con- 
ditions. I wish we might spend more time devising a 
suitable radiator for human spirits. We are either too 
hot or too cold most of the time. When the sun is beating 
down on us, and the road is sandy and rutted, and every- 
thing is going dead wrong, most of us begin popping off 
steam, and then our motors stall. When the atmosphere 
is cold, and indifference is in the air, and the chill of 
selfishness is all around us, most of us lack the ability to 
stay good and hot, ready for the next job. Watch your 
radiator. 


The Efficiency of Patience 


Fourth, watch your tires! Tires are the inflated 
cushion of patience which take up the shocks of the road. 
If life were a smooth boulevard of level asphalt, and the 


88 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





loads were always light, we might be justified in careless- 
ness about our tires of patience. But you don’t have to 
drive long before you come to recognize the red bars and 
the gleaming danger lanterns which indicate a detour, the 
roads torn up for repairs, the ruts of winter, the dust 
and sand of summer, and the frightful mud-puddles that 
seem to be the constant fate of some lives. You must 
keep tires inflated hard enough to protect the tires them- 
selves. Too soft is comfortable, but fatal to the fabric. 
And yet you must have them soft enough to absorb the 

shocks of the road, not only for your own comfort, but 
also for the life and efficiency of the car. Just so in life. 
Even if you are unwilling to be patient for efficiency’s 
sake, it is the only way to get along pleasantly at all. The 
journey is bound to be a poor one unless you have learned 
how to watch and care for the tires of patience and for- 
bearance. 


The Heart of the Machine 


Fifth, and last, watch your electricity! You may not 
have a self-starter in your life, but if you have none, you 
are probably a crank and have to start that way. Most 
of us need a storage battery of energy, to give that first 
sudden twist to our mechanism and get us started on the 
various journeys of life. All of us need a battery to 
make sure of the first sparks of ignition for the first 
explosions. And all of us need the steady gleam of the 
headlights for night driving. Watch your electricity! 
See that your batteries are kept charged. Have your 
wiring in good order. Make sure that that invisible, im- 
ponderable, misunderstood, almost unbelievable force 
called religion is stored up in your life. You may insist 


LESSONS FROM MY FORD 89 





that I am particularly fussy about this point because I 
happen to be a minister, and as such I run a battery- 
service station. You are right. Iam a specialist in the 
care of the vital current of life, religious faith. And be- 
cause I have seen so many lives go out of commission 
through carelessness in battery service, I tell you quite 
frankly to watch your electricity. No man has any right 
to expect to keep his batteries charged under the strenu- 
ous road conditions of these terrific years, unless once or 
twice a week he pulls up beside a church door and takes a 
little time off to have his batteries reenergized. Watch 
your electricity ! 


For the Long Journey 


Whenever you see a Ford from this time on, remember 
these five simple warnings which I have learned from my 
own gay jitney. And you will be better men and women. 
This is religion, so to translate the commonplace experi- 
ences of life into wisdom and prudence that you are better 
equipped for the trials and delights of the long road 
called Life. 


XI 
BELGIUM AND YOU 


iF you had been traveling through Belgium early in 1914, 
and had stopped to ask the question, “ What is the King- 
dom of Belgium?” you would have been met with an 
interesting variety of answers. The replies would have 
depended altogether on the mind of the person answering. 
One man might have said, “ The kingdom of Belgium is 
11,373 square miles of territory, bounded on the north by 
the Netherlands, on the south by France, on the east by 
Prussia, and on the west by the North Sea.” Such an 
answer would have been absolutely correct. I looked it 
up in a geography a few moments ago. 

Another man might have replied, “ The Kingdom of 
Belgium consists of 7,500,000 people, living in five prin- 
cipal cities, Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, Bruges, and Ghent, 
besides the villages and farming communities.” His in- 
formation would have been just as accurate. My en- 
cyclopedia confirms it. A third informant might have 
volunteered: “The Kingdom of Belgium is a limited 
monarchy, with King Albert at its head.” And no man 
could have contradicted him. 


The Truth About Belgium 


Yet strangely enough, while all these answers were 
true, no one of the replies, nor all three of them together, 
told the whole truth about the Kingdom of Belgium. 

90 


BELGIUM AND YOU Gt 





Suddenly something unbelievable happened. A thrill 
of news ran through the consciousness of that little coun- 
try. War had been declared. An army was battering at 
her boundaries. Every atom of force was needed to hold 
back the invader. 

From every city and town streamed forth those rivers 
of adventurous life now needed in the conflict. Young 
men in strange new uniforms, awkwardly carrying rifles, 
marched out to the fight. The little Belgian army took a 
stand, held it miraculously as long as they could, then fell 
back to another position. The enemy pressed closer. In 
the cities back of the battle-line, one could hear the dull 
boom of cannon, sometimes when the wind was right 
one could detect the sharp rat-tat-tat-tat of machine-gun 
fire, the air grew heavy with clouds of smoke which bore 
the bitter tang of burning homes and factories. Then 
along the roads which led to the Netherlands and safety, 
trudged pathetic little processions of very old men, and 
staggering gray-haired women, and buxom mothers carry- 
ing bundles of possessions over their shoulders, looking 
back now and then at the threatening billows of smoke, 
while they dragged along the weary miles tiny toddling 
children who cried for their daddies and did not know 
what it was all about. Poor bewildered Belgium! 


A New Idea 


Until one day, the people of Belgium awoke to find that 
if Belgium had been a block of territory, then Belgium 
was no more, for those fair hills and valleys were the 
possessions of a conquering foe, the cities were laid waste, 
and only a meager corner up near the coast remained as a 


92 THE MIRACLE OF ME 
EN Sie eae SES 


remnant of the Belgium which had been. If Belgium had 
been 7,500,000 people, Belgium was gone, for the men 
had been slaughtered by thousands, and the women and 
children were scattered like autumn leaves before the fury 
of a whirlwind. If Belgium had been a limited mon- 
archy, Belgium had disappeared, for Brussels was now 
general headquarters for the invading divisions, a foreign 
general swaggered through the royal palace, the senators 
and representatives were fugitives, and King Albert him- 
self, wrapped in his old army mantle, was sleeping by the 
side of the road, surrounded by a few soldiers who loved 
him. Yet they knew that Belgium existed. Where? 
From this experience they drew a new and a beautiful 
truth. 

They began to realize what they should have known all 
through the years, that Belgium was not a geographical, 
statistical, governmental fact, to be held out at arm’s 
length and analyzed. Belgium was a dream, a hope, a 
memory, a loyalty, which lived only within their hearts, 
to be defended by their courage, to suffer loss only if 
they were not true, to be destroyed only if they forgot and 
were disloyal. The Kingdom of Belgium was within 
them. They held its destinies in their hands. 


Changed Relations 


When this discovery captured their minds, two things 
happened. First, some things which had seemed very 
important, became very insignificant in their lives. There 
were women in Belgium who had spent the spring and 
summer months getting ready for the opening of the 
court season in the fall. They had lived upon the expec- 


BELGIUM AND YOU 93 


tation of it. What will be worn? How will the styles 
go? Who will be invited? Who will be snubbed? What 
will the big events be? These questions formed the sub- 
stance of their dreams and their talk. But when they 
began to realize that the kingdom was within them, all 
these frivolities of fashion seemed very small. They 
were lost before the great need of Belgium. 

There were men in Belgium who had centered all their 
love and hopes in their sons. They had saved and sacri- 
ficed that their boys might have a chance. All their own 
disappointments seemed to find healing in their sons’ 
plans. Perhaps one had sent his boy to medical college, 
and would spend the hours dreaming of that day when 
the boy would open his office in the big city, and the 
father would go down and sit in the waiting-room and 
watch the patients go in discouraged and faltering, only 
to come out a few moments later hopeful and eager. 
Perhaps one had sent his boy to an engineering school 
and hoped some day to walk out upon a new bridge with 
the great crowds, saying within his heart: “ This bridge is 
safe for allof you. I know. My boy built this bridge.” 
Life focused in their sons’ bright hopes. But when they 
realized that Belgium was within their hearts, and that 
Belgium needed their boys, they choked back the weary 
sobs, and sent their sons into the army. Some things 
which had seemed very important melted away into noth- 
ingness before the burning need of Belgium. 


A New Standard 


At the same time, another transformation was taking 
place. Some things which had seemed very unimportant 


94. THE MIRACLE OF ME 
—— 


began to take on primary importance because of their 
relation to Belgium. Those same women who had lived 
in the world of gossip and fashion, had been trained in 
the simple technique of amateur nursing. As schoolgirls 
they had been taught the elementary motions of the sick- 
room. They could make up smooth beds, cook simple 
invalid diet, staunch a wound, make a tourniquet, prepare 
a bandage, keep things antiseptically clean, fix a tray to 
tempt an appetite, and watch blood flow without fainting. 
All these things had been mere child’s play before. They 
had almost forgotten that they had learned them. But 
when they sensed Belgium’s need, they realized that this 
half-forgotten training was the only thing they had with 
which to serve their kingdom. And by the scores, they 
volunteered for hospital service, bound up hundreds of 
broken men, smoothed pillows for dying boys, saw blood 
and ragged flesh for an endless procession of terrible 
days, grew haggard and wan under the inhuman pressure 
of it, for Belgium! 

Those same men had learned perhaps to drive a motor- 
car with some degree of ease. They knew something 
about engines, could change tires quickly, mastered auto- 
mobile routes, and gained control of the machines they 
used. Only fun, of course, reserved for Saturday after- 
noons and Sundays when the weather was bright. But 
now it became apparent that Belgium needed all they had, 
and all they had was this previously insignificant ability 
to drive these cars. It had become the most important _ 
thing in their lives. Hundreds of them drove their 
machines to general headquarters; big purring limousines, 
and little rattly-bang trucks massed outside ready for use, 
devoted to Belgium, 


BELGIUM AND YOU 95 





Boy Scouts in Wartime 


There were Boy Scouts in Belgium, very much like 
our Boy Scouts here. They learned the same stunts: 
how to carry a helpless form; how to skulk through 
woods without making any noise or leaving any trail; 
how to draw maps with rough accuracy; how to signal 
with tiny flags from one hill to another ; how to love and 
honor their native land. It was just play to them, and 
the grown-up boys had a way of teasing these imitation 
soldiers. 

But one day arithmetic and spelling suddenly seemed 
strangely unimportant. Belgium needed every boy. 
Troop after troop, these Boy Scouts reported for duty 
with the army. This technique which they had learned in 
fun, became their chief glory. It was the one thing 
Belgium could use. They did creep noiselessly through 
woods where enemy platoons were waiting ; they did carry 
in wounded men over their slender shoulders; they did 
signal news of troop movements from hill to hill, and two 
of them, caught outside Liege by the sudden onrush of 
the great gray horde, were shot down in their tracks, and 
lay by the side of the road all day long, their signal flags 
still fluttering feebly in their still hands, their blond hair 
waving in the breeze, their dead eyes seeking some reason 
in the blue of a pitiless sky. They had come to know 
what they should have known years before, that Belgium 
was not a pink spot on a map, nor a set of formid- 
able population statistics, nor a difficult paragraph in 
a civics book. Belgium was a part of their lives. The 
kingdom was within them. They had maintained its 


glory. 


96 THE MIRACLE OF ME 
——— eee 


Another Kingdom 


Nineteen hundred years before, a man was talking in 
quiet tones to a group of intent listeners. He was speak- 
ing about a kingdom. For months he had lived with 
them, prayed with them, traveled with them, laughed with 
them, suffered with them, hoping to tell them plainly the 
truth about this kingdom of his. He had told them 
matchless stories about its people and its policy. Like a 
woman who lost a coin, he said; like a net, like a mustard- 
tree, like wise and foolish maidens, like a sower and his 
field, like a father who waits through the long days peer- 
ing down the road for the sight of his boy who has run 
away. Still they did not quite understand. Their brows 
would wrinkle and their smiles would vanish, as they tried 
to follow his thought. 

Then one day, as they pressed close to him, and a great 
crowd hemmed them in, he said this wonderful thing: 


“The kingdom of God is within you! ” 


I have wondered whether that simple sentence cleared 
away all their darkness. Did they fully understand? 
Did their ready smiles tell him that he had succeeded at 
last? Iam not sure. Perhaps their frowns vanished. 


Has It Come to You? 


But what interests me more is this. Do you fully 
understand? Have you caught the significance of the 
message? Here is a test for you. Do important things 
seem insignificant to you if they have no vital relation to 
the kingdom of God? Do unimportant things bulk large 


BELGIUM AND YOU 97 


eee eee ee ——— 


when they seem to have value for the progress of the 
kingdom? Have you analyzed your life and selected for 
survival and devotion the things Jesus can use? 

What is the church to you? To some men it is an in- 
teresting set of statistical accumulations. To others it is 
an aggregate of church buildings and organs and minis- 
ters and choirs. To others it is a bulwark for a creed 
or form of church government. But to Jesus it is the 
kingdom militant. It is his dream in battle array. And 
that kingdom, if it exists at all, exists not in year books, 
not in buildings, not in formalities, but in you, to be de- 
fended by your courage, to lose ground only by your 
retreat, to be destroyed only as you forget and neglect 
and deny. 


Some Kingdom Warriors 


Paul knew the wonder of it: “Thou therefore, 
Timothy, endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ.” 
“T have fought a good fight.” Livingstone knew the 
glory of it: “I shall place no value on anything I now 
possess or may possess, save as it has value to the king- 
dom of God.” Yates knew the demand of it: dying after 
years of missionary service, he said: “So much work to 
do. And I can’t do any more of it. God needs men!” 

Bill Borden knew the glow of it. With an allowance 
of $10,000 a year at Yale, men urged him to buy a big 
car and have a real time. “ What?” said Bill, “buy a 
car, when the price of a good car will keep my little 
hospital going in China for all next year? No car for 
mine.” He died on his way to a mission field of his own, 
and his will devoted every dollar to the needs of the 
kingdom. 


98 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





Pitkin knew the thrill of it. He stood in the middle 
of his mission compound while the raging Boxer rebels 
climbed up the walls. He sent his last coolie away with 
directions for escape. “Tell my wife in America,” he 
said, “to bring up the boy as we have started. Tell her 
when my boy is old enough, to send him back here with 
the message of Jesus for China.” Then the horde of in- 
furiated troops rushed upon him like maniacs, and cut his 
body into ribbons of flesh. 


The Battle Call 


O Christians, do you know the joy of it? Is life trans- 
formed from a steady monotony of insignificant duties in 
drudgery, into a glorious adventure in faith and courage? 
Are your gifts marshalled for the kingdom? Are other 
things put aside as inconsequential ? 

There was a company of soldiers awaiting an order to 
advance. The commanding officer said: “ Men, you see 
what we have todo. You see the machine-gun nests right 
ahead. You see the bodies of our boys in the gap. T’ll 
turn my back on you for a minute. Every man who will 
go with me to take that ground will step one pace out of 
the ranks.” He turned, waited, then faced his men again, 
The line was still unbroken. 

“Will none of you come?” he said. 

A voice came out of the line: “ Sir, we have all stepped 
forward!” 

Church of Jesus, you see what we have to do. You 
see the glories and the perils too. While our heads are 
bowed in prayer, will every one who will go with me, step 
one step out of the ranks, in the silence of decision? Will 
the line be unbroken, in loyalty to our Christ? 


XII 
LE TeaADsrIME; 


How would you like to live in a land where everybody 
had a fair start? Where all men were really given an 
equal chance? Where nobody has any more than you 
have to begin with, and each man has a chance to spend 
his share as he sees fit? 

Too good to be true, you are saying. You are recalling 
that the literature of the ages is marked at frequent and 
regular intervals by the appearance of books which were 
written to describe the Utopias of men’s dreams, and in 
each of these paradises of hope there was some sort of a 
redivision of wealth so that all men started on even terms. 
From “ The Republic” of Plato to the ‘‘ Men Like Gods ” 
of H. G. Wells; from Bellamy’s “ Looking Backward ” to 
Moore’s “Areas of Bliss”; from Samuel Butler’s 
“Erehwon,” spelled by reversing the letters in “no- 
where,” to the unreal film-world of the movie house into 
which men may escape for a few moments, at least, upon 
payment of a very small fee—the range of the attempt 
has been wide, but the mood has always been an insistent 
longing for a fresh start without the limitations of in- 
herited disadvantages. 

Indeed, much of the discontent of the world is aimed 
at this target of inequality. When an agitator wishes to 
begin a successful career in his particular profession, he 
has only to select some particularly vivid examples of 

99 


100 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





men at one end and the other of his scale of ideals, and 
harp upon the differences which are obvious in their 
fates. When a political party needs a new wave of sup- 
port from a new constituency, it takes upon itself a 
promise to level off the heights and depths of human cir- 
cumstances. When a failure is seeking an excuse for his 
defeat, he finds the easiest possible comfort in a snarl, 
“You never gave me a chance!” Much of this ardent 
complaint seems to be absolutely justified. But justified 
or not, it exists. And it sours life into a mottled bitter- 
ness which leaves no taste for delight. 


A Real Utopia 


How would you like to live in a land where every one 
had a fair chance? Too good to be true, you say? You 
are wrong. I am about to take you there. A blink of 
the eyes, and a clap of the hands, and a wave of my wand, 
and you are there, without more ado. 

For the basic commodity of life, the currency on which 
all other standards of value are reckoned, the coin which 
buys everything else in this commonwealth of men, is 
divided into absolutely even shares, share and share alike 
for each man, woman, or child. Nothing your parents 
could do could ensure you more than your share. And 
no extravagant indiscretion on their part could waste 
your just inheritance. This is a perfect socialism of 
wealth, an absolute Utopia of opportunity. 


Daily Redistribution 


But added to all this is another amazing fact. To 
further insure against inequalities, the entire sum of the 


IF I HAD TIME 101 





wealth is redivided and redistributed in even shares at 
the beginning of each day. Your own wasteful, slothful 
indolence yesterday cannot rob you of your share in this 
central store of wealth today. And another man’s 
rapacious selfishness cannot give him any more than his 
portion, mathematically assigned with each new morning, 
Here is a Utopia beyond men’s fondest dreams. Is it too 
good to be true? 

No, no! Say the word to searching men. It is here, 
this realm of their fancies. It works, here and now. We 
are citizens of this favored state. 


The True Coinage 


What is the fundamental commodity of life? What is 
that value for which all other values are exchanged? 
Money? No, money is bought with it! Goods? No, 
goods are commanded by it. The one standard of ex- 
change which buys everything else, but which nothing 
else can buy, is time. No man is born with an unfair 
heritage of it. No man lives who has less than his own 
fair share. No malicious plot can seize your supply of it. 
No overwhelming tyrant can strip your wealth away. No 
frenzied eagerness can gain you more of it. No jewels 
can purchase for you one moment more than you have a 
right toown. And every morning, just to make sure that 
fairness is ever new, the auditor of the universe wipes out 
all the record of our yesterday’s mistakes, erases all the 
impress of our hungry greed, and gives us a new start 
on an equality with every other person of the world, with 
the light of each new dawn. 

When men come whining to me, their lips curled in a 


102 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





craven complaint, and their voices passionate with a 
promise of what they could do if they had an even start, 
I sit back and watch them romp like drunken sailors 
through this perfect commonwealth of fortune in which 
they have been placed, spending the treasures of their 
lives in an orgy of careless futility, while they hurl their 
mean taunts at the men who are wise with their supply. 
When a great program for reform lures its adherents on 
by the promise of a tomorrow in which all assets will be 
shared, share and share alike, I sit back and watch these 
same reformers spilling the priceless treasures of the 
hours before the swine of thoughtless laziness—‘‘ Some- 
times they sit and think; and sometimes they just sit ”— 
and I wonder how long this even division of wealth would 
last, seeing how unevenly men use the automatically dis- 
tributed supply of time. And when a man tells me he 
could use money as wisely as anybody if he only had some 
to use, I like to examine the use he now makes of those 
bright coins, the minutes, which are minted fresh and 
turned over to him as fast as they are to any man. 


The Cowardice of Complaint 


Time is absolutely, evenly, irrevocably shared. If there 
is unfairness, it begins with our use of it. We are blun- 
derers in the technique commended by our text, “ Re- 
deeming the time.” Bargaining for full value in each 
transaction which involves our prime treasure seems like 
a lost art. We squander our only wealth, and then com- 
plain at the pitiable limitations of our fate. 

A football team, in defeat, comes crest-fallen off the 
field, glowering at circumstances, and muttering: “ If only 


IF I HAD TIME 103 





we had had five minutes more to play. If only the whistle 
had not blown just then!” What they really wish for is 
not only a few minutes more time, but those minutes on 
an empty gridiron unopposed by foes. They have a way 
of forgetting that in a game neither team has any more 
time than the other. They forget that the victors were 
hampered by the same time limitations as the losers, 
exactly. And that if a few more minutes could by some 
miracle be granted, the other team would still be there 
fighting like tigers to maintain their superiority. It is not 
time you need. It is the wit to know how to invest the 
time you have. There is no more craven, despicable, 
thoughtless excuse in the world than the pettish “ If I had 
time!” 


Time for Books 


“Tf I had time, I should read, but I haven’t time!” 
It is a lie, and one look at Roosevelt proves it. See 
that mighty, vigorous man, hindered all his life by in- 
adequate eyesight, seeing what he could as he peered 
with feverish intensity out of high-powered lenses, 
training those stubborn eyes to devour page after page 
with merciless rapacity. Police Commissioner of New 
York, Governor of his State, Assistant Secretary of 
the Navy, Vice-president, then President for year after 
year of glorious victory, surely this man might have 
been allowed to say, “If I had time!” Yet reading 
always, he pursued his journeyings through the far 
corners of the world’s literature; kept abreast with the 
newest in sociology, economics, history, and outdoor 
life; dipped with appreciation into philosophy and 
poetry; talked everywhere to every one about his 


104 THE MIRACLE OF ME 
ee ee ED 


books; set sail for Africa after his presidential term 
equipped with a special pigskin library especially de- 
signed for him, so that it might be carried about from 
place to place, through almost virgin territories, on the 
backs of willing black men. He must have a book, a 
good book, when they camped for the night. And by 
a flickering blaze he would read. “If I had time to 
read” ?—he sends that cowardly whine back to your 
teeth. He made time serve him for reading. 

We have the time and we use it, but on stuff we 
dare not dignify by the title “reading.” Headlines, 
and sporting pages, and funnies, and salacious scandals 
capture our thoughts, and the great society of earth’s 
elect goes unheeded. Listen again to this great para- 
graph of Ruskin: 


Do you know, if you read THIS, that you cannot read 
THAT—that what you lose today you cannot gain tomorrow? 
Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable- 
boy, when you may talk with queens and kings, or flatter 
yourself that it is with any worthy consciousness of your 
own claims to respect that you jostle with the hungry and 
common crowd for entrée here, and audience there, while 
all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society, 
wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and 
the mighty, of every place and time? Into that you may 
enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank ac- 
cording to your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can 
never be outcast but by your own fault. 


Or as Shakespeare said it: 


The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars 
But in ourselves, that we are underlings, 


IF I HAD TIME 105 





Time for Letters 


“If I had time to write—but I can hardly find a minute 
for letters.” It is a lie. Take one look at Franklin 
Lane, and repent for your self-deceit. Here was an in- 
trepid man of action, moving in the midst of great events. 
Public Service Commissioner, Secretary of the Interior, 
member of the Cabinet during the crisis days of the war, 
he wrote day after day to friends and dear ones thousands 
of miles apart letters so leisurely in mood, so deep in 
their philosophy, so comforting and helpful in tone, so 
personal in application, so sympathetic in spirit, that they 
seemed to have been inscribed with a pen of brotherly 
gold, for the healing of the nations. With affairs crush- 
ing in far more heavily than we can understand, his days 
were made glorious by the sense of contacts maintained 
with friends who needed him all over the world. 


No Time for Prayer 


“Tf I had time, I should pray; but there isn’t room in 
my day!” It is a foolish lie. George Muller, involved 
in the bewildering complexities of his great orphans’ 
home with its hundreds of saddened, gladdened children, 
said often, “I haven’t time not to pray,” and every 
morning he shut himself away in his closet for an hour 
or more of quiet with his Lord. Ferdinand Foch, with 
the weight of the Allied destinies bowing down his spirit, 
and the problems of a continent-spanning battle-line 
clamoring for solution, found time every day to seek the 
nearest shrine and there commune with the spirit of his 


God. 


106 THE MIRACLE OF ME 


No Room for Jesus 


“Tf I had time, I should speak a word for Jesus; but 
life rushes by too swiftly!”’ Tell me, does it hurry for 
you more than it did for Dwight L. Moody? Do you 
move in the midst of greater events than surrounded that 
prophet’s life? Are you beset with more personal de- 
mands? Do you empty yourself in your tasks more com- 
pletely than he did? Yet he lived his life under a solemn 
pledge that he would beseech some one person every day 
to follow Jesus. One night, very late, he was ready for 
bed when he remembered. Overwhelmed by duties, he 
had neglected his chosen duty. He dressed hurriedly, 
made his way through a foggy London rain, found a cabby 
drowsing in the box above two sleepy horses, roused him 
and told him his errand, stirred the man to the depths by 
his earnestness, won him to an interest in Jesus, then 
hurried home and crept into bed. No time—no time— 
for Jesus? 


APPENDIX 





THE CONGREGATION VOTES AGAIN 


“Preach It Again” told the story of a unique experi- 
ment in sensing and recording the reactions of a congre- 
gation toward the varieties of a year’s preaching. Three 
thousand votes gave an illuminating cross-section of 
modern preferences for sermons. An attempt was made 
by the preacher to analyze these ballots homiletically, 
and to determine what conclusions might be fairly reached 
about the effectiveness of pulpit methods. 

The testing by ballots has been repeated at the end of 
each preaching year. Five of the sermons in “ The 
Miracle of Me” were the favorite selections of the 
preacher’s third year in Syracuse. For those who were 
interested in the first announced results, a list of the third 
year’s sermons, and the results of the balloting, are here 
appended: 


THE SERMONS OF THE THIRD YEAR 
1. Lessons FroM A DIMINISHING CoAL Pitz. Text: James 5: 
‘pees 
“Day by day does it; almost any task melts away before per- 
sistency.” 
2. WHat It Means to Be A Minister, Text: 1 Corinthians 
OIG, 
“Hard work, much peril, but the very heights of glory.” 
3. THE ToucHINEss oF THE Saints. Text: Ephesians 4 : 32. 


“An uninsulated saint causes a short-circuit which wastes 
needed power.” 


109 


110 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





4. SCIENCE AND Rericion. Text: 2 Timothy 3 ;:, 16. 


“Science makes no charge against religion which religion can- 
not remake against science; it is time for a truce.” 


5. On DisTANcE IN ReEticion. Text: John 4: 4-26. 


“Three Negro songs can teach us the secret of nearness to 
God.” (Repreached by request.) 


6. WHat AND WHERE Is Gop? Text: John 14: 1. 


“Men have found him most perfectly portrayed in the life of 
Jesus.” 


7. THE Goop Fortune oF Bap Luck. Text: Psalm 23. 


“There is no strength without discipline.’ (Repreached by 
request.) 


8. Wuat Is Conversion? Text: Matthew 4: 19. 
“Halt! About face! March! Quit your meanness! ” 
9, AN ADVENTURE IN FRIENDLINESS, Text: 1 Corinthians 13. 


“Faith, hope, and friendliness, which is greatest?” (Repreached 
by request.) 


10. BountiFuL Eves. Text: Proverbs 22: 9. 


“Even the best-intentioned kindness must be equipped with 
wisdom.” 


11, WHat Price Patm Brancues? Text: John 12: 13. 


“Does our exultant joy in Him stand the tests of His Geth- 
semanes?” 


12. THE PRACTISE OF THE RESURRECTION. Text: 1 Corinthians 
15754 * 10 eel 
“We can prove that He is risen, if we show forth the beauty 
of His life.” 
13. Tue Moop or Exir. Text: Matthew 19: 22. 


“When we have seen Jesus and learned of him, do we go away 
sorrowing or rejoicing?” 


14. LESSONS FROM THE ARENA. Text: Psalm 133: 1. 


“We have seen a man devoting himself without stint for the 
sake of a cause and a Christ he loved.” 


APPENDIX 111 





15. My Prisoner. Text: 1 Kings 20: 39, 40. 


“Tnto my hands God has entrusted some one, for whom I am 
responsible; I have a prisoner.” 


16. Tue Porson or Sport. Text: Matthew 11: 17. 


“We are breeding a generation of spectators who enjoy the 
sensation of having some one battle for them.” 


17. Mary, THE MorHer or Jesus. Text: John 19: 26. 


“ A glimpse into the secrets of His home would enshrine all of 
motherhood.” 


18. A Morer’s Day MEssAGE To FLAppERS. Text: Luke 2: 19. 


“Let girls anticipate the coronation-day when they are to be 
crowned with motherhood.” 


19. THe CLEANEST City IN America. Text: Revelation 21 : 27. 
“ Not our streets and our slums and our politics, but our hearts 
also.” 
20. Down witH Memorrat Day! Text: Isaiah 2: 4. 
“Unless we can forever tear away the tinsel draperies which 
hide the horror of war.” 
21. THe HARMONY OF THE SPHERES. Text: Job 38: 7. 
“The lesson of blended notes hidden in a chord of beauty is a 
lesson for quibbling humanity.” 
22. Wuat’s HaAprPeNING AT INDIANAPOLIS. Text: Psalm 20. 


“The miracle of a great host of divergent minds being fused 
for the purpose of Jesus.” 


23. RULES OF THE Roap. Text: Psalm 119: 105. 
“None of us can be safe unless each of us keeps every one 
else in mind.” 
24. THe PARABLE OF THE LIBERAL Minp. Text: Matthew 25: 
14-26. 


“There is a frightening risk in the investment of conclusions 
made by the liberal mind.” 


112 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





25. Is CHRISTIANITY Over-SOLD? Text: John 12: 32. 
“Have we paid too little attention to maintaining the quality 
of the product? ” 
26. INTERDEPENDENCE Day. Text: Acts 17: 26. 
“We must never lose the sense of our oneness in need and 
achievement with all the world.” 
27. SPENCER AND THE STEEPLE-JACK. Text: Matthew 18: 6. 
“A city has some responsibility for what goes on in the minds 
of its boys and girls.” 
28. A Rattway ApvENTURE. Text: Matthew 16: 18, 
“Watch the crowd at a railway-station, and imagine what dif- 
ferent things irains bring to each one.” 
29. Lirt THE Hoop. Text: Luke 15: 19, 
“The first place to look, when trouble stops the engine, is 
underneath the hood.” 
30. Ir Tuts Were My Last Sermon! Text: Deuteronomy 33 : 
28, 29. 
“T should want to finish as I have begun—glorifying Jesus.” 


31. Tue First Communion. Text: Matthew 26: 17. 
“It would be worth while to make the scene of that fellowship 
supper vivid and real to us.” 
32. A Livinc WAGE For CHRISTIANS. Text: Isaiah 53: 11. 
“Most Christians seem content to be frightfully underpaid in 
souls.” 
33. THE ReE-CREATION OF CONVERSION. Text: John 4 ; 31-34, 
“There is no joy like the joy of winning another.” 


34. For TuHat Trrep Feetinc. Text: Isaiah 40: 31. 


“What we need is not rest, but new incentive.” 


35. ScHooL-DAYS. Text: Psalm 86: 11. 


“Life has its lessons every day; and most of us are dullards 
to learn so slowly.” 


APPENDIX 113 





36. Are You Reatty Ative? Text: John 10: 10. 
“There is a difference between living and existing. Are you 
using your faith to help you really live?” 
37. THE THEOLOGY OF THE Famity. Text: Matthew 6: 9. 
“ Jesus risked the meaning of his gospel on words which came 
out of the home and the family.” 
38. THE LecIon IN PEACE-TIME. Text: Joshua 7 : 20, 21. 
“The American Legion may become America’s greatest boon, 
or America’s greatest peril.” 
39. THE Man Namep Stone. Text: Luke 22: 54. 


“The firelight gleams on the pain-wracked face of Peter who 
denied him.” 


40. Tur Perits or Epucation. Text: Mark 10: 21. 
“ An educated rascal is a rascal still, more dangerous because 
he is educated.” 
41. Tur PersisTeNcy oF THE Mars. Text: 2 Timothy 4: 2. 
“Let us obey the imperial dictates of our Master’s messages, 
without delay.” 
42. Sermons IN Books. (1) “ THis Freepom.” Text: Acts 22 : 28. 
“ What place has woman in Christian society? Is motherhood 
a woman’s throne?” 
43, WuHy Can’t WE Cure INFANTILE PARALYSIS? Text: Romans 
10: 14. 
“ Doctors, as indifferent about infantile paralysis as Christians 
are about salvation, would be ousted in disgrace.” 
44. SAUL, THE SpecTATor. Text: Acts 7: 58. 
“There flashed before his eyes the vision of a man not afraid 
to die for Jesus.” 
45. THE EternAL GAME, Text: 1 Corinthians 9 : 24-27. 


“The goal is ‘Better,’ and the winners are those who fight 
through to improve.” 


114 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





46. SAUL, THE SEEKER. Text: Acts 9: 3-6. 
“Down the street staggers the blinded Saul, until he finds a 
friend who knows Jesus.” 
47. Ipiots. Text: Matthew 22: 21. 
“An idiot is a private citizen who does not vote at the polls— 
tell him so for me.” 
48. PauL, THE Power. Text: Acts 21: 13. 
“A storm of impetuous energy is turned loose upon a needy 
world.” 
49. THe Fire oN THE Mountaintop. Text: Mark 9: 2, 3. 
“Can Peter take the glory of transfiguration down into the 
monotony of tomorrow?” 
50. CoLGATE’S CHANCES. Text: Mark 10: 21. 
“They depend upon an imponderable, invisible, intangible thing 
called ‘ spirit.’” 
51, OUTWITTING THE War GERM. Text: Matthew 12: 44. 
“War is a dread disease, and we must crush it without mercy.” 
52. SERMONS IN Books. (2) “ Bassirt.” Text: Proverbs 29 : 18. 
“Any country which will buy Babbitt by the thousands is not 
afraid of bitter medicine; there is chance for a cure.” 
53. FooTBALL CHALLENGES THE CHURCH. Text: Ephesians 6 : 12. 
“Some day some genius will make the battle for right as 
dramatic as a football game; then victory will be in sight.” 
54. Ir I Hap Time. Text: Ephesians 5: 16, 
“You have as much time as anybody, and a new supply 
every day. What do you do with it?” 
55. THE CowarpicE oF Discontent. Text: Philippians 4: 6. 
“Tt is treachery not to trust; you are deliberately courting 
defeat.” 
56. Ir I Hap Lucx. Text: Romans 1: 21. 


““Luck’ is the coward word of the defeated, who are trying 
to excuse failure.” 


APPENDIX 115 





57. THE Fire oN THE LAKE SHoreE. Text: John 21 : 1-17. 
“There is one sure cure for temperamental Peters—work, 
work, and more work.” 


58. HAND-MADE GODS—THE CURSE OF THE Day. Text: Isaiah 
44 : 17-20. 


“Out of the fire-wood of our lives, we are carving images to 
worship—and we know better.” 
59. Tue Science or Rexicion. Text: John 14: 15. 

“Jesus discovered the truth about life, and tested it in the 
laboratory of experience.” 
60. THe TraGcepy oF THE GAtLos. Text: Mark 6: 34. 

“We go rushing madly by, and take no time for kindness to- 
ward pitiably lost folk.” 
61. Sermons IN Booxs. (3) “One oF Ours.” Text: Judges 

Gites 

“There are thousands of young lives futile because they are 
unconnected with an enterprise like the kingdom.” 
62. A PATHWAY oF ExprecTANT Hearts. Text: Isaiah 40: 4. 

“ All the rays of expectant, reverent prophecy, focus on Jesus 
and Bethlehem.” 
63. How tHe Kine Came. Text: Luke 2: 8. 

“ Almost stark in its simplicity is the picture of His coming.” 
64. Tue SuHapow or His Tracepy. Text: Luke 1: 38. 

“Only Mary could know all that her broken heart suffered.” 
65. Tue BRIGHTNESS OF His Grory. Text: 1 Corinthians 15 : 20. 

“ There was no life which so lived and ruled men, after what 
we call death.” 
66. How to Be A Martyr. Text: Acts 12: 2. 

“James learned the difficult art of daily sacrifice and service.” 
67. Tue RELIGION or ScreNcE. Text: 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-21. 


“Science proceeds upon faith: survives in hope; and serves in 
love.” 


116 THE MIRACLE OF ME 





68. THe EMpERoR CONSTANTINE AND THE PuBLIC SCHOOLS. Text: 
Matthew 10: 16. 
“Let us tempt men to trust Him by living, rather than force 
men to love Him by laws.” | 


69. Sermons IN Booxs. (4) “THE Great Huncer.” Text: 
Psalm 42: 1. 


“There is only one true satisfaction for the great hunger of 
life.” 
70. CHRISTIAN CRAFTSMANSHIP. Text: 2 Timothy 2: 15. 

“ With all skill of trained mind, steer a wise course, Christian! ” 
71. GUARDIANS OF Our FaitH. (1) THe Roman CATHOLIC 

CuHurcH. Text: Matthew 16: 18. 

“We must learn some of that awe-struck humility before the 
rich treasure of our faith.” 
72. THE SUICIDE OF THE CHURCH. Text: Acts 7: 26. 

“ When desire rebels against desire and will, then death is fore- 
ordained in the tragedy of suicide.” 


73. GUARDIANS OF Our FaitH. (2) THe UNitTarIAN CHurcH. 
Text: Hebrews 4: 15. 


“The protest which called us back to the humanness of Jesus 
is the glory of Unitarian history.” 
74. THe Man Wuo Broucut His Brotuer. Text: John 1: 41. 
“ Andrew had a knack for bringing others to Jesus; the church 
is dying for lack of Andrews.” 
75. Is RELIGION AN ELectTive? Text: Mark 12: 30. 


“Give faith a chance for a fair fight in the general melee of 
life; that is all faith needs.” 


76. LINCOLN AND BoyHoop. Text: Luke 2: 52. 


“Build him a Greek temple; but leave him near enough 
humanity to be loved and followed.” 


77. SERMONS IN Books. (5) “MartA CHAPDELAINE”” Text: 
Psalm 20: 7. 


“The boasted complexities of civilization are a challenge to 
. J 53 
religion. 


APPENDIX 117 





78. A CHuRCH oF Two THOUSAND Pastors. Text: Genesis 
4:9. 
“This is the slogan of the new reformation—no man between 
me and my brother; every man his own pastor.” 
79, GUARDIANS OF Our FaitH. (3) THe Metuopist CHurcH. 
Text: Revelation 1: 50. 
“A burning zeal, as the life of the spirit—this is the lesson of 
Methodism.” 
80. THE Reticion or Kinc Tut. Text: Mark 8: 35. 
“There is only one way to immortality; that is to plunge 
yourself into the battle of life.” 
81. GUARDIANS OF Our FaitH. (4) THE Quakers. Text: 
Romans 8: 14. 


“The inner light and the courage of profound conviction—we 
inherit these from the Quakers.” 


Tue Five ELEcTtTeED SERMONS 


meltcol EHad, lime. 

An Adventure in Friendliness. 
. The Religion of King Tut. 
The Suicide of the Church. 

. Christian Craftsmanship. 


Tue Next FIVE IN THE BALLOTING 


A Mother’s Day Message to Flappers. 
. Lincoln and Boyhood. 

The Cowardice of Discontent. 

The Man Who Brought His Brother. 
. The Good Fortune of Bad Luck. 


SOND 


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